University of California • Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley, California

David E. Pesonen

ATTORNEY AND ACTIVIST FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, 1962-1992:
OPPOSING NUCLEAR POWER AT BODEGA BAY AND POINT ARENA,
MANAGING CALIFORNIA FORESTS AND EAST BAY REGIONAL PARKS

With an Introduction by
Phillip S. Berry

Interviews Conducted by

Ann Lage
1991 & 1992

Copyright © 1996 by The Regents of the University of California

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of
collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a
narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-
informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the
historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for
continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected
manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable.

************************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement
between The Regents of the University of California and David E.
Pesonen dated February 12, 1992. The manuscript is thereby made
available for research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part
of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California, Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with David E. Pesonen requires that he be notified of the
request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Dvid E. Pesonen, "Attorney and Activist
for the Environment, 1962-1992: Opposing
Nuclear Power at Bodega Bay and Point
Arena, Managing California Forests and
East Bay Regional Parks," an oral history
conducted in 1991 and 1992 by Ann Lage,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1996.

Copy no.

David Pesonen, fishing trip, 1963.

Photo by Julie Shearer

TABLE OF CONTENTS --David E. Pesonen

INTRODUCTION- -by Phillip S. Berry i

INTERVIEW HISTORY ill

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION vi

FAMILY, BOYHOOD, AND EDUCATION 1

Influences of Parents and Places 1

A Boy's View of the Attack on Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath 4

Father's Career with the Bureau of Reclamation 9
Physics, Poetry, the Outdoors, and the French Foreign Legion:

Youthful Interests 13

Firefighting for the Forest Service, 1953-1954 15

Forestry Student at Berkeley, 1955-1960 19

II EARLY JOBS AND INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUES AT BODEGA BAY 25

UC's Wildlands Research Center and Stegner's Wilderness Letter 25
Staff Member for Assembly Fish and Game Committee: Counting

Deer Tags for Pauline Davis 29

Working for Dave Brower and the Sierra Club, 1961-1962 31
A Summer of Waiting and Writing, 1962: Security Clearance

Problems for United Nations Job and Atomic Park Articles 34

New Left Philosophies and Bodega Bay 38

Public Power vs. Private Power and the Bodega Issue 40

Sierra Club Representative to PUC Hearings on Bodega, May 1962 42

Focusing on Seismic Hazards and Quitting the Sierra Club Staff 45

III CAMPAIGN TO PRESERVE BODEGA HEAD AND HARBOR, SUMMER 1962-

FALL 1964 49

A Visit to the Atomic Park 49

Rallying Public Opinion: The November 10 Forum 53

Saint -Amand and the Earthquake Fault 58

Relations with PG&E 62

Role of Udall's Department of Interior 65

Keeping Bodega in the News: Memorial Day Concert and Balloons 66

Growing Doubts about Site Safety and PG&E Pullout, October 1964 70

Stance of Governor Pat Brown and Democratic Party Officials 74

The Technical and Human Problems with Nuclear Power 77

IV MORE REFLECTIONS ON THE BODEGA CAMPAIGN AND ITS AFTERMATH 82
Pioneers of Sixties-Style Activism or Pragmatic Campaigners? 82
Some Key Figures: Doris Sloan, Joe Neilands, Charlie Smith,

Sam Rogers 85

Attorney Barney Dreyfus and the Use of Lawsuits at Bodega 89

Rose Gaffney: A Fearless Volcano 94

The Role of the University of California 96

Speculations on Conspiracies and Phone Taps 99

Looking Back: The Disembodied Evil of Industrial Civilization 101

Influences of the Bodega Experience on PG&E 103

Personal Impacts of the Bodega Campaign 104

Law School: UC's Boalt Hall, 1965-1968 106

Defending People's Park Activist Dan Siegel 108

V ATTORNEY IN THE FIRM OF GARRY, DREYFUS, McTERNAN, AND BROTSKY 112
The Partners and Clients in a Radical Old-Left Firm 112
Peripheral Role in Black Panther Defense 116
Defending Point Arena from a PG&E Nuclear Power Plant, 1972-1973 119

The Svengali of the Antinuclear Power Movement? 120

A Seismically Interesting Problem 122
Unfavorable Publicity and PG&E's Swift Abandonment of

Point Arena 123

The Sierra Club, Ike Livermore, and Nuclear Power 126

Defending Public Access to Beaches 129

The Widener Case: Another Encounter with PG&E 130

A Libel Case in the Interests of Free Speech 133

A Corrupt Judge, a Sympathetic Jury, a Final Settlement 136

Defense of Mount Sutro and the City of Davis 138

The Disturbing Saga of Charles Garry and the People's Temple 142

First Suspicion of Evil in the Temple 143

Garry's Trip to Guyana, November 1978 146

A Difficult Decision to Leave the Garry Firm 148

VI INITIATIVE CAMPAIGN FOR THE NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS ACT, 1973-1976 152

Presumed Dead 152

Genesis of the Idea for Initiative Effort in California 153

A National Antinuclear-Power Network 153

Ed Koupal and the Art of Signature-Gathering 155

Assemblyman Charles Warren's Encouragement 156

Early Efforts by Koupal, Duskin, and the People's Lobby 157

Pesonen's Emergence as Leader of a New Campaign, 1975 159

The Role of Creative Initiative in Qualifying the Ballot Measure 162

First Meeting with an Extraordinary Organization: Funds

and Personal Resources 162

A Sense of Uneasiness 169

Organizing in Southern California 170

The "Defection" of Three General Electric Nuclear Engineers 171

Leadership and Nature of Creative Initiative 173

An Intense Political Campaign to Pass Proposition 15 177

Safe Nuclear Power or No Nuclear Power? 178

Effect of the Warren Legislation on the Campaign 179

Inspiring and Assisting Efforts in Other States 183

Jerry Brown and a Debate on Nuclear Power in San Francisco, 1976 184

VII MANAGING CALIFORNIA'S FORESTS IN THE JERRY BROWN ADMINISTRATION 188
Serving on the State Board of Forestry, 1977-1979 188

The Redwood Park Issue 190

Chairman Henry Vaux and Board Members 192

Regulating Non-Point Sources of Pollution 194

Appointment as Director of the Department of Forestry, 1979 199

Secretary for Resources Huey Johnson 202

Restructuring the Department's Staff and Management Systems 205

Women and Minorities in the Department 206

Management by Objectives 209

Renewable Resource Programs 211
The Fire Fighting Organization: Acquiring Air Force Helicopters 213

Dismantling the State Fire Fighting Program in Orange County 217
Sources of Tension between the Director and Department Employees 222

Relations with Timber Companies and the Legislature 223

Inspecting Fire Services at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant 229

VIII SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE, CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, 1983-1984 236
Midnight Appointment by Jerry Brown, to the Wrong Court 236
Swearing-in Ceremonies, Sacramento and Martinez 240
Preparing for the Bench, Hearing Cases 243
Two Politically Crucial Sentencing Decisions 247
Putting Together a Political Campaign 250
Serious Illness, Poor Press, Election Loss 253

IX EAST BAY REGIONAL PARK DISTRICT GENERAL MANAGER, 1985-1988: THE
ORGANIZATION AND ITS POLITICS 259
An Interim Position in Sterns Law Firm 259
Hired by the Park District; Reorganizing the Staff 260
Political Controversies and the Politics on the EBRPD Board 263
Elected Board Members: Intrigue and Interference 267
A Fatal Mistake and More Intrigue 269
Leaving the Park District Position 274
Conflicting Views of the District's Mission 276
Negotiating the Acquisition of Ferry Point in Martinez 280

X LAND ACQUISITION AND PARK PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT AT EBRPD 284
Financing Acquisitions with State Grants and Revenue Bonds 284
The Regional Park District and the Oakland Zoo 288
Ardenwood Regional Park 290
Relations with Park Field Staff and Unions 293
Quiet Victories in Chabot and Sunol Parks 294
Reorganizing the Interpretive Program 300
Lack of Support from the Board for Promoting the Parks 302
Working with City Officials and Environmental Organizations 305
Parks for the People or "Nimby" Preserves 307

XI RECENT WORK AS A PRIVATE ATTORNEY 310
Mediating the Dispute between the Sierra Club and the Sierra

Club Legal Defense Fund 310
The State Farm Sex-Discrimination- in-Hiring Case: Managing the

Remedy Phase 319

TAPE GUIDE 327

APPENDICES 329

A. Karl Kortum letter on Bodega, San Francisco Chronicle. 3/14/62 330

B. "The Battle of Bodega Bay," by David Pesonen, Sierra Club

Bulletin. June 1962. 331

INDEX 332

INTRODUCTION- -by Phillip S. Berry

The familiar chest x-ray taken anterior-posterior--"A-P, " fore and
aft, straight on through the patient--is usually good enough for most
diagnostic purposes. Less familiar is the oblique angle shot, not so
frequently used but at times much more informative, particularly for fine
and subtle distinctions.

That my own thinking more often follows an A-P approach is probably
one reason I have enjoyed so much my thirty-five-year friendship with David
Pesonen, master of the oblique insight. Always catching subtleties others
miss, Dave has that ability to see the unusual angle — a talent much needed
by those who start public movements or innovate in public policy.

In the early 1960s serious questioning of so-called peacetime uses of
nuclear power had barely begun, and Dave was one of those few who kick-
started the movement to test the safety standards (which proved dismally
insufficient), pop the balloons of the industry experts, and arouse a
quiescent public to the dangers and incredible costs of generating
electricity with atomic power.

Starting with the Bodega Head fight- -which without him would have
been merely a skirmish quickly lost by environmentalists and nuclear
doubters—Dave pioneered a movement which has ended with the nuclear power
industry on its knees, the victim of its own inflated promises, dangerous
oversimplifications, and stupendous costs.

I wish I could say the Sierra Club was fully with Dave for all that
battle, which started when he was a lower level club staff member seeking
to forestall approval for a PG&E plant at Bodega Head, sited directly over,
as later discovered, an active earthquake fault. The club was then in the
process of change, and its leadership balked, taking the now (and to me
then) incomprehensible position that nuclear power— and safety— was not a
conservation issue. Dave quit his club job and continued on, with a few
hardy allies, but clearly he was the real leader against the plant. He saw
every angle to exploit and explored every weakness of his utility
adversary.

It was almost ten years later that the club board of directors, in a
divided nine to six vote on my motion, adopted the position implicit in
Dave's early views: nuclear power could be approved only when,
overwhelmingly, safety is affirmatively demonstrated and the waste problem
permanently resolved. Both these problems remain unresolved thirty years
later.

Dave brought to the Bodega Head fight, and every succeeding effort
which spanned many conservation matters of great importance, an
overwhelming sense of purpose, a keen mind, skill at guerrilla fighting,

ii

and a doggedness in the face of adversity which I still see as a foremost
trait in my fishing and camping companion of many years now.

Dave did much after Bodega. His fault finding continued with
inadvertent help from PG&E, whose engineers seemed to have an unerring
instinct for siting proposed nuclear plants directly over, or too close to,
theretofore undiscovered but significant geologic faults. He quickly
defeated two more plant proposals, bringing his total of nuclear "scalps"
to a record level.

Dave's years as California Department of Forestry chief and later as
head of the East Bay Regional Park District were marked by the same ability
to see and do things not obvious to others. His imaginative legal
strategies to save old growth plus a buffer for expansion of Redwood
National Parks succeeded brilliantly. The loggers' most forceful spokesman
wrote in 1983:

By the early sixties the Sierra Club was completing its
transition from an organization primarily concerned with
outdoor wildland enjoyment to environmental activism. The
battle of the Sierra Club vs. the California Tree Farmer was
begun. It was a battle in which the Tree Farmer was outclassed
and out-maneuvered and he never won a single skirmish. Phil
Berry and David Pesonen were both first heard in 1962 in
testimony representing the Sierra Club calling for stricter and
more rigid regulation; a song they continue to sing up to, and
including, this very day.

Who else but Dave would have suggested that the State Forestry take over
the task of preserving the great elm trees lining Sacramento streets,
simply to save energy through the cooling shade they provided? Who else
would have audaciously proposed that the park district join an Interstate
Commerce Commission proceeding to oppose a major rail abandonment, with the
result, through eventual settlement, that the old right-of-way became a
public park? A few examples, and I can give many more, wherein Dave saw a
way through the complex maze.

I wish at times Dave appreciated more my predominantly "A-P"
approach. Then I might not so often have to correct his misreading of
topographic maps. He might even give up insisting that we delay to make
coffee when the fish are biting early in the morning.

But may he never lose his trademark "obliqueness." It has served him
and us, the conservation movement, very well indeed.

Phillip S. Berry, Esq.,

Sierra Club, Vice President, Legal

Oakland, California
September 1996

ill

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Best known for his highly visible leadership role in the battle to
defeat a PG&E nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay in the early 1960s, David
Pesonen has had a less visible but much longer thirty-five year career as
environmental activist, manager, and attorney. Because of his importance
to the history of the environmental movement, the Regional Oral History
Office urged the California State Archives Oral History Program to record
his work in state government; we then expanded the project to a full oral
history documenting his varied life and career.

David Pesonen 's first job as a graduate of UC Berkeley's School of
Forestry was with the UC Wildlands Research Center, working on a Wilderness
Report for the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. His brief
stint with the Center resulted in a lasting contribution to wilderness
literature. Struggling to complete his section of the report, on
wilderness as an idea, Pesonen enlisted the help of Wallace Stegner, a
writer whom he did not know but whose work he admired. Pesonen 's request
struck a cord with Stegner: the result of his entreaty was Stegner 's famous
Wilderness Letter (to David Pesonen, dated Dec. 3, 1960). Stegner later
said, "This letter, the labor of an afternoon, has gone farther around the
world than other writings on which I have spent years."

Not long after, David Pesonen was hired as conservation editor by
David Brower, then executive director of the Sierra Club. One of his
assignments was to represent the club at the May 1962 hearings of the
Public Utility Commission on PG&E's plans to build a nuclear power plant
north of San Francisco at the quiet harbor of Bodega Bay. He emerged as
leader of what seemed to be a quixotic campaign by the north coast locals
to defeat the utilities giant, and two and one-half years later his group,
the Northern California Association to Preserve Bodega Head and Harbor,
celebrated PG&E's abandonment of the Bodega plan. In his oral history
David Pesonen recalls in detail the decisive moments, strategic decisions,
publicity efforts, and inspired leadership of that first significant
citizens' battle over nuclear power. Jazz concerts, picnics, "radioactive"
balloon releases, picketing, legal action, Sacramento lobbying, expert
scientific testimony—all were part of the success of the Bodega campaign
and all influenced the many environmental campaigns to come later in the
sixties and seventies.

Motivated by the Bodega experience to become an attorney, David
Pesonen attended UC Berkeley's Boalt Law School. He then joined the San
Francisco firm of Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan, and Brotsky, a radical old-left
law firm committed to political causes. During this period he continued
his work in opposition to unsafe nuclear power, helping the Sierra Club
defeat a PG&E nuclear plant at Point Arena on the northern California coast
and running the campaign for the Nuclear Safeguards Initiative of 1976.

iv

This latter three-year effort was defeated by the voters but prompted
strong legislation that accomplished most of its aims. It was another nail
in the coffin of the nuclear power industry in California, as well as an
early and imaginative effort to use the initiative process to further the
environmentalist agenda. The oral history also gives his perspective on
the Charles Garry law firm and Garry's involvement with the Black Panther
Party and the tragedy of the People's Temple at Jonestown.

In 1977, Pesonen returned to his forestry profession as a member of
the State Board of Forestry, then chaired by UC Professor of Forestry Henry
Vaux. In 1979, he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to head the
Department of Forestry, leaving at the end of the Brown governorship to
become a superior court judge. Later he served for three years as general
manager of the East Bay Regional Parks (1985-1988). His reflections on
these two managerial positions illuminate the complex organizational issues
and personal dynamics within two very different public agencies, as well as
the environmental and resource management issues confronted, from fire-
fighting to resource renewal, from land acquisition to interpretative
programs.

The Pesonen oral history also contributes to legal and judicial
history, with its discussion of his appointment and service as superior
court judge in Contra Costa County (1983-1984) and his work as an attorney
in private practice.

The eight interview sessions were conducted from December 1991 to May
1992, a total of fifteen tape-recorded hours.1 David was familiar with
oral history and the Regional Oral History Office because his former wife,
Julie Shearer, was a longtime oral historian at ROHO. They had met and
married during the Bodega campaign, which Julie covered as a reporter for
the Mill Valley Record. Julie's recollections of Bodega and later events
were a helpful source of information for the interviewer. Preparation for
the interviews included research in the Sierra Club records and Joel
Hedgpeth papers in the Bancroft, several ROHO oral histories on the Sierra
Club and forestry, minutes of the Board of Forestry, records of the
Department of Forestry, and a number of published and unpublished accounts
of the Bodega campaign and the nuclear initiative campaign and other
subjects.

Interviews were held most often in David's home in the Elmwood area
of Berkeley, with two sessions in his law office at Saperstein, Mayeda,
Larkin, and Goldstein, in Oakland. He spoke informally, clearly, and
candidly. He was modest about his accomplishments, displaying a notable
degree of perspective in analyzing these seminal events and his role in

'Interview sessions 5, 6, and 7 (Chapters VI-IX of this volume) were
recorded for the California State Archives State Government Oral History
Program's "Oral History Interview with David E. Pesonen", 1992.

them. His transcribed words required minimal editing, and he made almost
no changes during his review of the transcript.

The selection of photographs illustrating the Bodega battle come from
a post-victory scrapbook prepared for him by his grateful co-campaigners
Jean and Karl Kortum, and Julie Shearer. David's longtime friend, fishing
and camping companion, and fellow attorney and environmentalist Phillip
Berry wrote the insightful introduction to this volume.

In December 1992, David Pesonen married Mary Jane LaBelle of
Berkeley. Now semi-retired, he divides his time between Berkeley, serving
as a private judge and mediator, and his Oregon ranch on the Sixes River, a
fine salmon and steelhead stream where he pursues his passions for fishing
and growing things .

The Regional Oral History Office, a division of The Bancroft Library,
has been recording first-hand accounts of leading participants in the
history of California and the West since its founding in 1954. This volume
adds an important perspective to our on-going documentation of the
environmental movement and natural resources management issues.

Researchers interested in these topics may wish to consult Regional
Oral History Office interviews with David Brower, Richard Leonard, Wallace
Stegner, and Phillip Berry in the Sierra Club series; Henry Vaux in
Forestry; Francis Heisler in legal history; and Joel Hedgpeth in the Parks
and Environment series.

Ann Lage
Interviewer /Editor

September 1996
Berkeley, California

vi

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

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I FAMILY, BOYHOOD, AND EDUCATION
[Interview 1: December 17, 1991 HI1

Influences of Parents and Places

Lage: Today is December 17th, 1991, and this is the first interview
with David Pesonen. We were going to start by looking back at
family influences, boyhood experiences, that kind of thing. And
I know your father, in particular, was a big influence on you.
Do you want to start telling something about your parents?

Pesonen: Well, my mother [Eleanor Sarah Barton] was more of an influence,
as I look back on it now, than I thought when I was growing up.
Both parents were a good influence—quite different influences.
In fact, how they got along, I don't know, but they did — they
loved each other. I think it's because my father [Everett Alex
Pesonen] was such a kind and thoughtful person, and my mother had
all those instincts, too, although she was much more volatile .-

I was born in Washington, D.C. on April 6, 1934. It was
during the Depression. My parents were married in 1932, and my
father had just graduated from Michigan State in landscape
architecture. My mother aspired to be a poet and a writer, and
she was an English major. I don't know how they met, and if I
did, I've forgotten. They weren't very wealthy. My father came
from an immigrant family in upper-peninsula Michigan. His father
had come from Finland to work in the iron mines.

Lage: Was it a Finnish community?

'This symbol (it) indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun or
ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript.

Pesonen: It was a Finnish community, and he had gone to Finnish school.

He was the eldest of five- -five who survived, there were two who
died in infancy—and they moved to a farm when he was very young.
So he grew up working the farm. Since he was the eldest, he was
the one who could go to college. It's a holdover from peasant
culture in the old country that the eldest inherited whatever
there was to inherit. None of his siblings went to college. All
but one are still alive—they're a very durable bunch of people.
But, in any event, they had some timber on the farm. They sold
the timber, and that helped to finance my father's education.
And he worked. He taught school when he was right out of high
school.

So my parents met in college. There was a famous Finnish
politician named Emil Hurja. I don't remember how to spell that.
Hurja was one of the prominent people in the New Deal. He was
very active in bringing Finnish immigrants to the United States.
But he was also very active in promoting their careers and he
took a shine to my father.

Lage: Now, how did he meet him in Michigan?

Pesonen: I don't know. He was a congressional aide from that area. I
don't know for sure. But he got my father a job in the
Department of the Interior, in the National Park Service.

Lage: Did he know William Penn Mott? He was a landscape architect,

too. [Former director of California State Department of Parks and
Recreation and of the National Park Service]

Pesonen: He went to school with William Penn Mott.
Lage: Oh, he did?

Pesonen: They were classmates. I think Mott was a year ahead of my

father, but they knew each other in college. It just shows what
a small world it is. In fact, I saw Mott just last week. In any
event, my father got a job somehow as a minor designer in the New
Deal administration in the Department of the Interior in Parks,
and my father is a very good administrator—he's very good with
people. He's got an equanimity about him that people like and
are drawn to. So he moved up fairly rapidly in administrative
circles.

For reasons I don't remember, when I was about a year old,
we moved to Oklahoma City. He had some position with the
National Park Service there--! don't know what it was. My
brother was born there two years after I was born, on July 4th,
in fact, 1936. I think we lived in Oklahoma for about a year and

then moved- -the first place I really remember living was Santa
Fe, New Mexico. My father had a position as a middle manager of
some kind in the National Park Service in New Mexico. He
traveled a lot, visiting parks, supervising the design and
building of parks, supervising Civilian Conservation Corps crews.

Lage: So this was all Depression era work in the Park Service?

Pesonen: There was a lot of emphasis under the New Deal, I think really
the result of--who was the Secretary of the Interior?

Lage: Ickes.

Pesonen: Ickes. Harold Ickes. Ickes was enamored of the idea of putting
young farm boys and city boys to work rehabilitating the country.
So there was a lot of that going on all over the country,
including New Mexico. My parents loved New Mexico, and I loved
Santa Fe.

My mother's stepfather died while we were there, and she
inherited some money which was supposed to go for my college
education. Her dream all her life was to own a bookstore. So
she bought the Viagra bookstore in Santa Fe with that
inheritance. In those days, Santa Fe was a kind of bohemian
center for artists and writers—later led to what Taos is still
today. So she hobnobbed with all kinds of people who were in
that artistic community and she just loved it. She was a
bohemian spirit.

Lage: Now you're still very young at this point.

Pesonen: Yes, but I remember this.

Lage: About what year would it have been?

Pesonen: This would have been 1938 and 1939.

Lage: So you were just four or five.

Pesonen: I remember it very vividly. I remember the smell of pinon smoke,
I remember the hubbub of people coming through the house all the
time, visiting my mother's bookstore--! loved the smell of books.
I just loved the whole scene.

Then, in 1939, my father was appointed head of the Civilian
Conservation Corps for all of the Hawaiian Islands. So we moved
to Hawaii in late 1939 or early 1940.

Lage:

That was a big change.

Pesonen: That was a big change. I remember getting on the ship at Fort

Mason here in San Francisco. It was just a wonderful time. And
my mother was delighted.

Lage: Oh she was? I was thinking it might be a hard move for her.

Pesonen: She loved people and she loved new places, and Hawaii was another
bohemian center. A lot of expatriate-type people. We got to
Hawaii in late '39 or early "40 and I loved the islands. I never
had any shoes, climbed the mango trees—it was just a playground.

Lage: Which island did you live on?

Pesonen: We lived in Honolulu. Since my father was a very high government
official, my parents got invited to a lot of parties, and there
was a lot of activity. It was a happy time. It was a happy time
for me and my brother. We just loved to play, go to the beach--!
learned to swim there. We lived about a block from Waikiki
beach, and I went to the beach every day I think. I just loved
to swim and play around. I don't remember that I did anything
productive, but that's where I started school. They had a
program at the University of Hawaii for a teacher's college where
elementary school kids would be taught at the University by the
teachers —

Lage: Teachers in training?

Pesonen: --teachers in training. So I went to the University of Hawaii.
My brother wasn't in school yet then. All I remember is just
that it was a lot of fun.

A Boy's View of the Attack on Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath

Pesonen: The next big thing that happened was Pearl Harbor.

Lage: So you were there at the time of Pearl Harbor.

Pesonen: I remember that very vividly.

Lage: You have a good memory.

Pesonen: I remember some things. Some things I don't remember at all.
have a visual memory.

Lage:

And olfactory.

Pesonen: Well, before I started smoking I had an olfactory memory,
[laughter] I remember Pearl Harbor day just like it was
yesterday. It was fifty years ago this week.

I can remember waking up. We were thinking about Christmas.
The tree was up, the presents were in, I was expecting my first
electric train. The first thing I remember is going into the
kitchen. We had a Japanese maid whose name was Matsuko. She was
weeping and my mother was comforting her. The radio was blaring
"The islands are under attack," and we could hear explosions. I
got dressed immediately and went up on the roof to watch the
action. We had a roof you could get onto- -the other houses you
couldn't get onto so easily—so all the kids from the
neighborhood came and sat on our roof. We all sat on the roof
and watched. You could watch dogfights in the air, and the ack-
ack, and the airplanes going this way and that, and bombs
falling—it was very exciting. [laughter]

Lage: I'll say--a kid's view of Pearl Harbor.

Pesonen: But we weren't scared. It was all just a big show.

Lage: It was all at a distance.

Pesonen: It was a ways away. It was about ten miles away. There were
aircraft going over Honolulu-- Japanese aircraft. The sky was
full of action—little black puffs of ack-ack smoke all over the
place and airplanes going this way and that. There seemed to be
no pattern to it. Lots of excitement.

Lage: You didn't, as a young person, have the sense of something

building that other people who were there seemed to have had in
the period leading up to Pearl Harbor?

Pesonen: I seem to remember that my parents would listen to the Sunday

night news. Even Drew Pearson had a radio program. Drew Pearson
and a reporter named Gabriel Heatter— my mother called him
"Bleater Heatter." [laughter] He'd say "There's good news
tonight," or "There's bad news tonight." That was how he
introduced his program. And there was some talk of this
impending buildup of Japanese antagonism, and then there was lots
of news of the war in Europe, which was going badly for the
Russians and for a lot of people. I didn't really understand it
at first. I was seven years old then, but I did understand what
was happening in Pearl Harbor.

Well, after the attack was over--. My father, in fact, had
been out at Pearl Harbor fishing earlier in the morning. He had

left before the attack started. So he had just gotten home. I
suppose if he had been out there —

Lage: You might have been feeling a little different.

Pesonen: Then everything changed. They closed the schools. My mother had
a job working for the Army Corps of Engineers, and immediately
martial law was declared and people were frozen in their jobs.
My mother couldn't quit.

Lage: Couldn't leave her job?

Pesonen: Couldn't leave her job and look after us. We didn't go to school
then, so we had all day to just get in trouble. And we did.
[laughter] We got bored after a while, I think after a couple of
weeks, and we gathered all--I remember this—we gathered all the
wastebaskets in the house and piled all of the papers in the
living room and set them on fire. We thought that would be very
exciting—that would be a lot of fun.

Lage: That might bring Mother home from work!

Pesonen: Fortunately a neighbor was going by and came in and extinguished
this thing. But Mother was at her wit's end- -what was she going
to do with these two wild kids who had no school to keep them
occupied. She couldn't leave her job; it was illegal. She'd be
arrested. There was rigid martial law: lights were out all the
time; there was black paper on the windows; we dug a bomb shelter
in the front yard.

My father had gone out to various camps to inspect the
damage after the day of the attack and had brought home the wing
of a Japanese zero that had been shot down and crashed near one
of his camps. I was the envy of the neighborhood. I had the
wing of a Japanese airplane, or a large part of the wing anyway,
to play with in the front yard.

We dug a bomb shelter, and then they dug big bomb shelters
in all of the parks. We went through drills to go underground
whenever these drills went off—they were always going off. You
got so you almost didn't pay attention to them after a while.

Lage: So they expected more attacks?

Pesonen: They expected a real invasion. My father was enlisted into a
businessman's training corps. I still have a picture of him
somewhere in a uniform; he had a .45 automatic that he wore
around his belt. They went out and marched him here and there.
They never got into anything. [laughter]

Lage: I don't understand the closing of the schools too well.

Pesonen: Well, the schools weren't safe, and until they built bomb
shelters, they wouldn't reopen the schools.

Lage: And most women didn't work? What did they think would happen
with all these kids?

Pesonen: I have no idea. That was not my concern. [laughter]
Lage: Of course not.

Pesonen: Well, Mother was at her wit's end. She threatened to send us to
reform school. We had no knowledge of what that was. I remember
my brother and me packing our toys up in a little yellow box, and
we went out and put it in the car. We got in the car, and my
father started the engine, and he was going to take us to reform
school. Mother just didn't know what to do with us. I pleaded
with him to let me go back in and plead with her one more time,
and she relented. Of course, she didn't have any idea what a
reform school was—this was just carrying the threat. [laughter]
Reform school was one of those things that was like hell for
Catholics. It was a place where you went and never came back.

Lage: My mother used to threaten military academy to my brother,
[laughter]

Pesonen: Finally, the schools reopened, and we went back to school. Of
course, by this time my father's job had ended because the CCC
[Civilian Conservation Corps] was a make-work program for young
men, and the war took care of that. So there was no work for him
in the islands. We stayed about a year. We lost our house—we
were renting it and the military took it over or something. So
we spent the last three or four months living on the far side of
the island.

My brother, who was very gregarious, had walked in on some
neighbor—just walked in and started talking. He had a way of
doing that. He made friends with this family and they had a
beach cottage on the other side of the island which they let us
use while we were waiting to be sent back to the States. And
that was a wonderful time. It was an isolated little house way
out on the other side of the island. There was a little cane
railroad that ran right through the front yard and a big empty
beach.

My parents still had to go to work every day, so Bart and I
just walked the beach.

Lage:

You didn't have to go to school?

Pesonen: We didn't have to go to school. We just played on the beach. We
would find little fish, and we'd find things on the beach. We
just had a wonderful time. I remember one day we'd walked way up
the beach and we were walking back and we heard a huge roar
behind us and we turned around and just skimming the sand were
five fighter planes in training on low-level flights. I mean
just right at the surface. They were P-40s with the tigers
painted on the front, over the cowling of the engine. We just
fell flat on the sand and the planes veered up, and I can
remember looking up and seeing the pilot laughing at us out of
the cockpit.

Lage: This combination of the idyllic beach setting and these war-like
maneuvers going on.

Pesonen: They were war maneuvers.

Well, finally we were sent home, and we were sent home in a
convoy on the Hunter-Liggett, I think, was the name of the ship.
It was a transport and we were crammed into a very small
stateroom with the bunks stacked up along the side. Two days out
we stopped and just sat, waiting for another vessel to catch up
with us. It was the battleship California, which had been sunk
on December 7th and raised and patched. But it wasn't completely
repaired. It still listed about ten or fifteen degrees and was
very slow. They were bringing it back to the states to, I think,
Bremerton, to be completely rebuilt and put back into service.
So this strange convoy was finally assembled outside Honolulu:
the battleship California, three or four troop ships like the one
we were on bringing people back to the states, a tanker, two
destroyers, and we were very slow. It took us about twelve or
fifteen days to get back.

Well, my brother got the mumps right out of Honolulu, and
swelled up like a chipmunk. We were all stuck in this little
stateroom and we thought we'd all get it.

And then it got stormy and we had--I can remember the drills
for submarine attack. Well, finally we did have an attack and
the drills really went off. The drill was to go to your
stateroom, put your life jacket on, and wait for further orders.
I can remember all of us huddling in this stateroom as depth
charges went off where destroyers were searching for this
submarine that supposedly had been spotted. It's a sound you'll
never forget. It must be horrible if you're in a submarine to
have that sound, but it's bad enough in a surface ship, because
it's this huge explosion that comes in at you from all parts of

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

the room. The ship's hull must pick up this enormous explosion
and then just implode it into each little space. And these
explosions kept going off, one after the other. Finally they
stopped and the order was given to get in the lifeboats. My
brother still had the mumps, and it was freezing cold. I can
remember sitting in a lifeboat with Mother holding my little
brother wrapped in a blanket, and they swung the lifeboats out on
the davits, and we were hanging out over the water. And then we
just sat there. [laughter]

What an experience!

Finally it was all over, and the lifeboats were swung back in—
they had them all ready to drop in case the ship was hit with a
torpedo — and then it was back to normal life on the ship.

How did people react?

All differently. Mother was a little hysterical,
was a wonderful, exciting experience.

You weren't scared?

I thought it

No, I wasn't--! don't remember being frightened. I remember
thinking "This is just a great adventure." The whole thing was a
great adventure. [laughter]

In general was the tone calm, or were people panicked?

People were pretty calm, I think, generally in those
circumstances. As long as there seems to be somebody in charge,
and things aren't falling apart.

You had a routine, you knew what you were supposed to do-
People were frightened, I'm sure, and maybe suppressing their
panic, but there wasn't a lot of hysteria.

Father's Career with the Bureau of Reclamation

Pesonen: We finally got back to the States. We got back to San Francisco
and I think they put us up in the Mark Hopkins—one of the big
hotels downtown—for a couple of weeks. My father then got a
job, or maybe had it already before he left the islands, with the
Bureau of Reclamation, in the planning of Millerton Reservoir
outside of Fresno.

10

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

You mean that was going on in the middle of the war?

Yes. The Central Valley Project was launched in the late
thirties and was really getting started in the early forties.

It's surprising that it continued through the war years.

Lots of things continued through the war years, including the
Central Valley Project which was a huge public works project that
reshaped California. My father was a Progressive — a New Deal
Progressive—and he thought it was wonderful. He believed in TVA
[Tennessee Valley Authority], he believed in a lot of things
which have become albatrosses, economically, now. And, of
course, people didn't think about environmental consequences of
big dams and great transfers of water and irrigation projects.
It was all making the desert bloom.

Right. It was the Progressive thing to do.

And my father was certainly part of that. We lived in Fresno for
about a year. I can remember we had Christmas there in 1943, I
think.

Was your father of an age where he was too old for military
service?

He was too old to be called,
have been forty years old.

Well, he was born in 1902, so he'd

Fresno was fun, too. I mean, I just had--I enjoyed being a
kid. [laughter] There were a lot of outdoor things.

Was there hunting and fishing? Was that part of your upbringing?

My father would take us to Kings Canyon fishing, and since he had
a government job, he had a car, and he had a little money, and he
had some leisure time, and he spent it with us. He spent a lot
of time with my brother and me. In fact, the whole family- -we
did a lot of things together. My mother didn't like to camp.
She wasn't a bit interested in fishing. But she loved just
looking at scenery.

How did she like Fresno after Santa Fe and Hawaii and--

Well, I don't know. My mother was a pretty jolly person. Jeez,
I don't remember her ever being somber or sour about it. She was
a good mother—she took good care of us. That's all that I
noticed, you know? I always had plenty to eat, and plenty of
clothes, and felt loved, and my parents loved each other. They

11

got along very well. I don't remember any family strife in my
life, of any kind, until many years later. That probably was a
very important influence. I was a secure person from the time I
was born.

Lage: Despite almost being taken to reform school. [laughter]

Pesonen: Well, that was just a matter of asserting authority. You need
authority, too, when you're a kid- -you need authority and
authority figures. I don't recall any unhappiness as a child, or
any sense of insecurity. These things that would cause — like
being there at Pearl Harbor and being in the lifeboats and things
that would be traumatic for people who were already unsure of
where they stood in the world would be frightening experiences,
but if you are very secure about who you are and where you are
and about your emotional support system, then you've got time to
think of them as adventures. They come to you that way. And
that's the way I look back on that part of my life.

Then we moved to Sacramento. My father was promoted into
some higher level position. I think he ultimately ended up as
assistant regional director, but with responsibility for all of
the fish and wildlife and park planning and recreational planning
of the Central Valley Project. He loved that job, and I think he
was very good at it. I never really quite understood what he
did--I didn't pay that much attention to it--but he had to go out
into the field a lot to these projects, like Shasta Dam, the
Delta Mendota Canal—all kind of things. And he would take my
brother and me with him. We traveled a lot of the time, whenever
it was possible, to go and see what was building, then, at the
Central Valley Project. Some people now see it as an
environmental disaster for California, but nobody saw it that way
then.

Lage: It was totally different--

Pesonen: And, of course, his job was to mitigate the environmental
consequences to the extent that they were understood.

Lage: They wouldn't have used those terms--

Pesonen: They wouldn't have used those terms, and there probably was an

economic reason for it. I think in justifying the cost of a dam
or another water project of any kind, there would be a component
for electric generation, there would be a component for
irrigation benefits, there would be a component for recreation
benefits, and some of these projects probably weren't
economically feasible unless you manufactured a recreational
benefit to justify them to Congress for the funding. So, as I

12

look back on it now--a lot wiser—a lot of what he did probably
was window dressing from the point of view of the top manager of
the Bureau. That wasn't the way he saw it.

II

Lage: What was your father's perception of his work?

Pesonen: Well, looking back on it, he was mitigating the inevitable side
effects of the great social experiments- -the great social
projects. A lot of people would look back on it differently now.
I gave him, a couple years ago, a copy of the book Cadillac
Desert which I thoroughly enjoyed, and that retrospective view of
the wars between the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of
Reclamation over water development in the West just wasn't
perceived then.

There has been a whole social awakening in the environmental
movement. Maybe somebody saw then, but even Aldo Leopold didn't
see that- -didn't see it coming. We just know a whole lot more
about selenium in water, about the effect of great transfers out
of the Delta and the Bay. We were ignorant then. We're still
ignorant, but we were more ignorant then.

Lage: How did your father react to the book?

Pesonen: Well, by the time I gave it to him, he was suffering from the
early stages of senility, and I don't think he ever read it.

Lage: Had you discussed these changing perceptions of the big water
projects with him?

Pesonen: I can't really, now. He doesn't have much memory left. He'll be
ninety next year, and he's really fading fast. He was fading
then. So you can't discuss those things with him now.

Lage: Yes, but the environmental movement did start raising these
issues when he was still well. Was he defensive about it?

Pesonen: No, he wasn't defensive about it. He was really philosophical.
He did what he thought was right and he had a lot of integrity.
He's a cheerful person, and he doesn't torture himself with
doubts about whether he did the right thing. He did what he
thought was right and if it was wrong, it wasn't because he
thought he was doing wrong. And so he doesn't have any regrets,
or he didn't have any when he was capable of having regrets.
That's the way history unfolded. He was very proud of what I did
in the nuclear movement. I think he thinks --he's glad I've done
what I've done; he's proud of me. I tried to live up to his

13

expectations. He never pushed me in any particular—neither
parent pushed me in any direction. I always knew I was going to
go to college, and I always knew I was going to be active in some
socially useful way. That was just a given. It wasn't as though
it was expected of me in a way that I was pressured. That's the
environment I grew up in, that's what I expected to do.

Physics, Poetry, the Outdoors, and the French Foreign Legion;
Youthful Interests

Pesonen: My first real interest was in being a nuclear physicist. I got
fascinated with nuclear physics when I was a teenager in high
school. I read everything I could about it. That's the way I do
a lot of things.

Lage : Now what year would this have been?

Pesonen: That would have been 1951 and '52 and into '53 when I started in
junior college. I get interested in things, and then I start
reading all I can find about them.

Lage: Do you know how that interest developed? Was it a teacher or--

Pesonen: No, I don't know how that developed. I think that's just the way
I was. When I was just a kid I got interested in raising
rabbits, and I read everything about rabbits, and I built rabbit
hutches, and I had rabbits, and then I lost interest in rabbits.
I built model airplanes, I built all kinds of model airplanes,
and I spent a year or two doing that. My brother was the same
way. He got interested in collecting butterflies. He had
butterflies all over the place.

Lage: Was this with the parent participation or just tolerance?

Pesonen: With parent encouragement, or tolerance, depending on what it

was. I got interested in nuclear energy, and I read everything I
could about it. I wasn't a brilliant enough mathematician to
really ever be a good physicist or a good mathematician. I was a
mediocre math student. I was fascinated by all this stuff, but I
wasn't brilliant. And I knew at some point that I would never be
a great physicist if I went into physics. And there were
conflicting interests. My mother was a poet, and I always had a
literary interest.

Lage: Did you read a lot?

Pesonen: I wrote a lot. I always had an interest in the outdoors. My

father was very active in the Unitarian Church in Sacramento. He
helped to found it and keep it alive and raise money for it and
was president of the board. He insisted that I go to Sunday
school every Sunday, but he gave me a choice, I think when I was
twelve--! had to go until I was twelve, and then I could decide
for myself. As soon as I was twelve, I quit going to church,
because I thought if there was a God he was living out at the
river. [laughter] And I wanted to go out and play around the
river. I loved the smell of willows and river water and river
banks and all that decaying stuff that goes on around rivers. I
loved rivers. So Sunday morning I'd go to the river and go
fishing, and we'd play up and down the river.

Sacramento's a great place for kids. There are two rivers
there that come together, and they're both wonderful rivers: the
Sacramento and the American. They're just interesting rivers.
There's a lot of life in them—there was then, anyway. [pause]

Lage: We have you in junior college with an interest in nuclear
physics.

Pesonen: Well, I wanted to go to the University [of California]. I didn't
really know what I wanted to do. I knew I wouldn't be a
physicist. I toyed with the idea of being a writer, but I didn't
see how I could ever make a living at that. I didn't know what I
wanted to do. Then I dropped out of school. I couldn't get into
the University because, despite this wonderful background of an
English major mother and my father was a very good writer also, I
flunked the Subject A exam. [laughter] I couldn't get admitted
into the University, so I had to go back to junior college to
make up my English requirements. We got bored--! had some
friends there: Neil Jones and Bob Connelly. We hung out and
played cards and pretty soon we started cutting classes. So,
without my parents' knowledge, I quit school entirely and got two
jobs. We decided we were going to go to France and join the
French Foreign Legion.

Lage: More adventure.

Pesonen: And I got a job in a can company, the Continental Can Company,
making tin cans during the daytime, and at night running the
computers for the Department of Motor Vehicles. We saved all our
money, and I told my parents I was studying at the library every
night .

That was 1953. I saved up enough money and my friend Bob
Connelly, who's now chief of staff for the Assembly Rules
Committee in the legislature—a very old, close friend—he took

15

off ahead of me chasing a girlfriend of his who was working in
Pakistan, and then he and I were going to hook up in Paris and
get on to Algiers or someplace and join the Foreign Legion.

Lage: Was that really an option?

Pesonen: We thought it was. It was at least an excuse. So I told my

parents what my plan was and confessed that I had not been going
to school and that I had saved my money for this great adventure.
I didn't tell them that I was going to join the Foreign Legion, I
was just going to go to Europe and have my European tour. So I
hitchhiked to New York--I remember my father taking me out and
dropping me off and shaking my hand and wishing me well as he
dropped me off with a little pack on Highway 40. I hitchhiked
all the way to New York City and hung around New York for a
couple of weeks. I had a ticket on the Holland-American lines
for $200 to go to Europe. When I picked up my mail at general
delivery, there was a draft notice. That saved me. [laughter]

Lage: Saved you from what?

Pesonen: If I had gone to Europe, I really was going to join the Foreign
Legion. So I flew back to California and went down to the
induction center on the appointed day, and they turned me away.
They said "We thought you'd gone to Europe, so you're not being
drafted." The Korean War was just over or just about to be over,
but there was still a draft, and since I wasn't in school, I was

classified 1A and ready to go.
place for me.

But they said they didn't have a

Firefighting for the Forest Service. 1953-1954

Pesonen: So I heard that the Forest Service had a job fire fighting up in
the Mendocino National Forest, and I drove up to the headquarters
in Willows and told them I wanted a job as a fire fighter. They
had an opening up at a little place called Alder Springs, and
there was one captain there named Julio Silva, and he hired me.
He was in charge of the station, and I would drive the fire
engines. I had driven trucks before when I was a kid. I had
worked on a farm—the Waegell ranch- -through high school. So I
knew all about machinery and I knew how to work it, felt
comfortable with it. This was a logging camp which also had this
crew there. Julio lived with his family, and I lived alone in
another little house.

16

When I had been there about a week, I drove down to Willows
to get my physical exam for this job, and on the way back, I came
around a corner and here was Julio coming down the hill in the
fire engine. He said "Park your car, get in- -we've got a fire."
So I hopped in and we went down the road about a mile and around
a corner. Here was a huge fire just taking off up the mountain
side. We couldn't possibly do anything with it. We called for
all the help. This was my first exposure to fire- -I'd been on
the job a week- -no training, just a healthy body and knew how to
use a shovel. It turned out to be one of the great disasters of
all fires in Forest Service history.

That night one of the other fire engine drivers disappeared,
so Julio had to go and drive that engine, and I was left alone
driving our engine. There was a lot of confusion. By this time
many forces had been brought in, and the fire was racing north
into the timber. It was called the Rattlesnake fire. I think
this was 1953, probably July or late June.

Suddenly I heard that there were some people who had been
killed. A crew had been sent down into a canyon to put out a
spot fire and stopped to eat their lunch there, and the wind had
completely reversed. In the valley on the west side, during the
day, the heat from the valley causes the breeze to go up-canyon.
But at night, when the valley turns cold, that process reverses
itself, and its almost instantaneous. It'll happen within a
minute or two. The fire had turned around and run down into this
canyon, and there were nineteen people burned to death- -the crew
leader who lived next door to us at our station, who was a
forester, and a crew of eighteen missionaries from a little camp
up in the Mendocino forest called the New Tribes Mission. These
were born-again Christians who were training to go to Central
America and convert the Indians or something. They made extra
money by fighting fires for the Forest Service.

So I was diverted from fire fighting to look for survivors.
I spent the night driving little back trails in this four-wheel
drive wagon--in a fire engine. And I found a couple of people
who had escaped this conflagration. But the next day we found
the nineteen bodies down in the brush. They were all completely
burned. So that was my initiation to forestry and fires.

Well, I stayed the summer and liked the work. We had a
good, busy fire year. Julio and I went to a lot of little
lightning fires and all kinds of fires and I loved the work. I
loved taking care of the equipment, I loved sharpening the tools,
I loved being out there, and I loved fire fighting. Also, I got
paid well.

17

Lage: And that first experience didn't turn you off?

Pesonen: No, it didn't. In fact, Julio and I helped catch the guy who set

it.

Lage: Oh, it was an arson fire.

Pesonen: Julio had spotted a car turning off into Grindstone Canyon when
he was driving down before he had met me and picked me up. We
went back to fire camp the next day, and as we were going through
the mess line, an investigator came up to me and asked me if I
had seen anything. I said "No, but Julio may have." Then he
went and talked to Julio. The fellow who was dishing up my
mashed potatoes or steak at that moment was a cook, and he said,
"Well, they're describing my car." It turned out he had set the
fire. They arrested him, and he was sent off to prison.

Lage: Did he just get the job after--
Pesonen: He had set the fire to get the job.
[tape interruption]

Pesonen: I loved that summer, and fire season lasted until about the first
of November, so I decided not to go back to school and just make
a lot of money. You could make pretty good money then. You got
a lot of overtime. If you went on a fire, you were on overtime
from the time you went out of the station until you got back,
even if it was forty-eight hours; even if it was a week.

I went on one fire that was way back in the Yolla Bolly
Wilderness Area above a place called Indian Dick--a little old
ranger station that was way out in the wilderness. That fire was
called the Yellow Jacket fire. I met some smoke jumpers on that
fire who had jumped into that. It was a lightning blaze, and it
had taken us a day to get in on horseback, and they were there--
they had parachuted in, and they had gotten a line around the
fire. Then we stayed a couple of days and put the rest of it
out — cut down the burning snags and extinguished them, and did
the mop-up. And I got to talking to these smoke jumpers and I
thought "Gee, that sounds like a wonderful job." So I made plans
to be a smoke jumper the next summer.

I went back to Sacramento and went to work for the
Department of Highways just temporarily until school started in
the spring. I remember that job. It only lasted a couple of
months, but I was drawing the plans for the freeways in southern
California. [laughter]

18

Lage: How you got into that--

Pesonen: Just the maps. I had taken drafting in high school, and I was a
pretty good draftsman, so I had a draftsman's job. And I got
very bored with it. I remember I made up a couple of little
towns and put them on the map, that didn't exist. [laughter]

Lage: A trouble-maker.

Pesonen: The flyspeckers in the department caught it, and I either got

fired or I was asked to quit. School was going to start anyway,
so I went back to school in the spring, with the full intention
of going to the University in the fall, but I still didn't know
what I wanted to study--! didn't know what field I wanted to go
into. Forestry appealed to me a little bit, but I didn't know
very much about it. I was thinking about being an English major.
I was thinking about still continuing in math. I didn't know
what I wanted to do.

Lage: Except be a smoke jumper.

Pesonen: Well, that was just to make money and to have a little adventure.
So I went back to school in the spring and I did very well—back
to junior college, to Sacramento Junior College—finished up the
year that I had let collapse when I went to Europe. Then I got a
job as a smoke jumper at Cave Junction, Oregon, that next summer.

Lage: Was that something that you just threw yourself into or did you
have a lot of training?

Pesonen: I'd never jumped out of an airplane before. So I went through
the training. I was the only one who wore glasses. I had to
have special goggles made with my prescription. I loved the
training. It was very hard work, I mean, you really get in
physical shape, but I didn't get along that well with the people
there. I think I was kind of an arrogant young man. I had some
problems with some of the other people in the station. I think
it was just immaturity and arrogance. I thought I knew a lot
more than I did. [laughter] And then I got hurt in the practice
jumps. I made five jumps, and I loved hanging in the parachute.
It's an experience beyond description; you are just up there.
They were the old kind of parachutes; you couldn't steer them
very well, and you hit the ground real hard. They would drop us
over forested areas with clearings, and we had to steer this
parachute and land in the clearing. I sprained an ankle on one
of those jumps and so I was off for a while. You had to do seven
practice jumps before they would send you out on a fire, and I
wasn't able to do the seventh, so they got me a job on a trail
crew over on the coast on the Chetco River, which I did for a

19

couple of weeks. I didn't like it, and by this time my friend
Bob Connelly had gotten my old job at Alder Springs, driving the
fire engine. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I didn't
like the trail crew job, so I just quit and got in my car and
drove down to Alder Springs to live with Bob. It turned out that
there was a new position there, a patrolman position. One of
these young missionaries had the job driving a jeep around to
inspect buildings and clean up campgrounds and do fire
prevention, and we decided to find a way to get rid of him, and
I'd get that job. [laughter] Bob didn't like him — they lived in
this little house together. I can't remember his name now.

To make a long story short, we persuaded him to go to this
remote wilderness ranger station called Indian Dick because he
could have a horse. He had this pioneer imagery in his head. He
had a hand-cranked clothes washer--he loved that. He loved all
kinds of things that didn't need any electricity. The only thing
he needed to have power for was a radio that picked up short wave
broadcasts from the missions down in Panama describing how they
were converting the Indians and singing this doleful, doleful
music, and he'd play it loud, and it was just awful. One day,
when he was in town, we took the aerial connectors out of the
casing and painted them with rubber cement so that they didn't
work. He thought it was a change in the atmosphere that was
interfering with his reception from his pals down there in
Central America. He strung wire all over that camp--from tree to
tree — trying to pick up that signal and it never worked,
[laughter] Finally, we told him what we'd done when he left, and
then I got that job. So Bob and I spent that summer working
together, and we just had a wonderful summer.

Forestry Student at Berkeley. 1955-1960

Pesonen: That summer, I was on a big fire, and I met a forestry student
from Berkeley. He said "Yeah, I go to forestry school. It's a
great profession; you work outdoors all the time; there's lots of
jobs." And so I decided that was what I'd do. That fall I went
back to the University and registered in forestry.

Lage: That would have been '55 or '56?

Pesonen: That would have been '55. I think it was '55.

Lage: So you were attracted mainly to the outdoor experiences,
fighting- -

fire

20

Pesonen: Well, no, forestry more. Soils and silviculture.
Lage: You had a sense, then, of what it was all about.

Pesonen: Well, I spent a lot of time sitting on the fire line talking to
this guy, and he explained a lot of it and said it was a
wonderful field. I didn't know what I wanted to do. It sounded
like the best of all possible worlds. 1 never really bought into
the philosophy, of course; I was always a bit of an outsider. I
took a lot of English classes and a lot of classes in other
fields. I loved the University, and I just loved going to
school.

Lage: It was unusual to take a lot of the humanities classes as a
forestry student, wasn't it?

Pesonen: Yes. Most of my classmates were going to go to work for a

logging company or the Forest Service. I remember when they were
graduating, and we'd sit around the library and talk about the
various recruiters who had come from potential employers, and the
talk was all about what their retirement plans were like.

Lage: Even at that age?

Pesonen: Yes--which companies had the best retirement plans. I couldn't

believe that anybody would care about retirement when you're just
getting out of college. But I think they were very conservative
people.

Lage: Conservative in personality?

Pesonen: Yes. Conservative personalities and very worried about security.

Lage: It sounds more like the atmosphere today in a sense, where young
people seem concerned, maybe rightly so, with financial security.

Pesonen: I think so. They were people who had come out of the war and

come out of a less-secure economy. Maybe it's because my father
was a government employee, and we never worried about that sort
of thing. It was a secure, middle-class family. That was the
last thing on my mind. I wanted something that was going to be
interesting and productive, and I didn't care about retirement.
I wasn't sure I'd ever live that long anyway. [laughter]

Lage: Did you find that there was a forestry student "type"? I know
when I interviewed Henry Vaux [forest economist and former dean
of the UC School of Forestry] he talked about a sort of a
stereotypical type of forestry student, a little less people
oriented and--

21

Pesonen: Less people oriented?

Lage: Yes, less people oriented. Particularly in those earlier years
than later.

Pesonen: I don't remember that, but then I didn't think in those terms
then. [pause] Yes, I think that probably they were
introspective, or maybe not so introspective as... shy. It wasn't
a very social group. There was a bond among men that do anything
together, but it's not a deep emotional bond; it's a bond that
fills an emotional void that doesn't have anything else to fit in
it. It's like salesmen when they get together at conventions or
something. A little camaraderie, but--

Lage: You didn't see a deep camaraderie among the students?

Pesonen: No, and I didn't feel a deep camaraderie. Except that we had all
gone through a kind of experience together, which was some kind
of a bond. But I haven't maintained those friendships over the
years.

Lage: Were there women in your class?

Pesonen: No. Well, maybe there was one. But it was an all-male world.

Lage: That was very different from the University at large.

Pesonen: It's very different from now. There are a lot of women in
forestry. Of course, there isn't much of a forestry school
anymore .

Lage: It's very small now.

Pesonen: It's very small, and it's been absorbed pretty much into another
college. But then, still, it was a residual of the frontier of
logging. There were lots of virgin forests left.

Lage: Was the emphasis on logging?

Pesonen: The emphasis was very much on growing wood to be cut. We took

logging engineering courses. We took a lot of courses on how to
cruise timber, how to scale timber, how to scale a log. It was
very production oriented.

H

Lage: Which of your professors do you recall as being influential?
Pesonen: Well, Vaux was just a great influence on me, and John Zivnuska.

22

Lage: Vaux was dean at the time?

Pesonen: Vaux was dean; he also taught forest policy. Zivnuska taught
forest economics. There was Ed [Edward C.] Stone who taught
forest ecology. Those were--

Lage: So these are the broader subjects.

Pesonen: Yes. I took a course from Starker Leopold in wildlife

management, which was a wonderful course. Probably the most
influential professor I knew was an English professor--Tom
[Thomas F.] Parkinson. He had a great influence on me.

Lage: Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Pesonen: Well, he was just a fine teacher. He made literature come alive
for me, and poetry, and really fine writing. I loved to read,
and I started writing poetry around that time. None of it was
ever any good, but it was a good discipline because it is very
economical. It stood me in good stead my whole life. And he
encouraged that. Every word has to count in a poem; there's no
waste in a poem. So I think I write very economically now. I've
sent you some of the things, and I don't think you'll find any
wasted words in there.

Lage: That's interesting, thinking of poetry as a discipline for
general types of writing.

Pesonen: You look for ways to get as much meaning into as few words as

possible. I practice that discipline a lot. I think it's been
useful in my writing, too, because I write well and I write legal
writing and stuff. So that was a great influence.

Well, I never really thought I wanted to go into poetry. By
the time I graduated—first, there was two years off for the
army.

Lage: Oh, you did end up in the army?

Pesonen: I ended up in the army in 1957 and '58.

Lage: So that was a break in the middle of school.

Pesonen: That was a break.

Lage: Was that a choice or were you drafted?

Pesonen: I was still draf table, and I wanted to get it out of the way

before I graduated. I didn't want to graduate and join the army.

Lage:

23

I wanted to graduate and go into whatever else I was going to do.
I still wasn't sure I liked forestry as a career, so I
volunteered for the draft. I knew I was going to have to go in,
so I figured "I'll get it out of the way and then graduate and
then I don't have to worry about it."

I was just an enlisted man. I was sent to Texas after basic
training, for a year, and wangled my way to Europe for a year. I
got assigned to a little station down south of Ingrande near the
Loire Valley in France, a beautiful place. There was this small
station, and I had a lot of freedom to leave and go to Paris,
and I went to Paris almost every weekend. [laughter] I loved
France; I just loved Europe. I spent a year there. I met a girl
in Paris, a New Zealand girl, and she and I started travelling
together. We traveled all over.

This was while you are still in the army?

Pesonen: I was still in the army. 1 would take leave and go on vacation

with her. That was a nice time. I had a good time in Europe. I
hated the army. I hated the discipline; I hated the boredom; but
it was a good experience.

I came back in February of 1959, and I went back to forestry
school and graduated in 1960. I didn't graduate with all of the
people I had been through school with.

The big event in forestry school is summer camp. You have
to spend one summer up at Meadow Valley near Quincy, learning
field techniques. It's the bond of the class. The class goes
through school together; they'd been to summer camp together.
Well, everybody I went to summer camp with graduated two years
ahead of me. The class I graduated with, I hadn't gone to summer
camp with. So I was always a bit of an outsider. That didn't
trouble me. You look back on it now, and I didn't even think
about it.

Lage: So in retrospect--

Pesonen: It's never been clear what class I'm in. [laughter]

Occasionally, I go to the Christmas reunion party--! did this
year, as a matter of fact—and they make everybody stand up from
each class. It's never clear what class I stand up with.

Lage: Do you stand up twice?

Pesonen: My summer camp class is the class of '58, and my actual

graduating class is '60. I would have graduated in "59--I had
the units—but I wanted to take more English. I wanted to take

24

English criticism. I was really getting interested in a lot more
English literature. So I took an extra year.

Lage: So that's how you were able to fit in all of the humanities, by
spending a little more time.

Pesonen: Yes.

Lage: And you had your junior college classes.

Pesonen: I had some of that. That was credited against my graduation
units.

25

II EARLY JOBS AND INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUES AT BODEGA BAY

UC's Wildlands Research Center and Stegner's Wilderness Letter

Pesonen: When I graduated in '60, I didn't know what I was going to do. I
didn't want to go to work for the Forest Service, I didn't want
to go to work for a logging company. I interviewed with some of
the employers, and it just didn't interest me. I guess that was
when I started working for the Wildlands Research Center.

Lage: That was in '60.

Pesonen: When I was in school I had competed in some essay contests. I

put myself pretty much through school. I got a little help from
my parents, but I didn't ask for a lot of help. They were
generous whenever I needed it. But I lived in a little room, and
I hashed in sororities for my meals and for a little spending
money, and I saved money during the summer. But one summer, when
I went to summer camp I couldn't make much money- -although I did
get a job part time working up there for the Forest Service.

Lage: Even during summer camp?

Pesonen: Even during summer camp. I worked weekends filling in in a fire
station. So I earned my way through school pretty much. It was
a lot easier to do then than it is now, you know.

Lage: It was easier to live on a shoestring then.

Pesonen: It was much easier to live on a shoestring. I had a reliable
car, and I didn't mind living in a little room and using the
library to study. I got by somehow. I never felt deprived. I
never felt poor or unable to support myself. And I always had my
parents to fall back on if I needed it, and I did occasionally,
and they were always --my father was always generous, too. By

26

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

this time my brother had died, so I was an only child. My
brother died in 1952.

An accident or an illness?

No, he had cancer. That was the beginning of my mother's
alcoholism. My brother was a much more outgoing person than I
was, and he and my mother were more soulmates than Mother and I
were. My mother was a very volatile, emotional, demonstrative
woman, and that kind of turned me off for some reason.

What was her ethnic background?

Scotch-Irish. She was very neurotic in a lot of ways. She had
been put up for adoption when she was about six because her
mother had too many kids.

She didn't have that secure family background that you had?

Well, she loved her adoptive parents. It was a very strict
family. Her adoptive father, for whom I'm named, David Wood,
wanted to adopt her, but had a very strict Victorian wife who--I
think Mother told me once that she was molested when she was a
little girl and that was a taint on her. Somebody had fondled
her and then her stepmother was always very disapproving of her
after that. So Mother had a lot of emotional problems which were
pretty much under control as long as my brother and I were
growing up, but really got out of hand later, when- -she really
began to drink and be very unhappy after my brother died. That
was a great loss to her. And I didn't fill the void. I didn't--

You were out of the house- -

Well, I wasn't emotionally responsive,
brother had always been.

either, in the way that my

That was going on, so I didn't go home very much. I didn't
like being around my mother when she was like that. Anyway,
since I had done some writing in forestry school, they recruited
me into the Wildlands Research project.

You started talking about an essay contest. That's how this--

There were a couple of essay contests. One was called the Walter
Lathrop Pack contest. I don't even remember what I wrote about,
but I won the prize. And I did it mainly for the money,
[laughter]

Lage:

Not for the honors .

27

Pesonen:

I needed the money,
significant amount.

It was only $100, but back then $100 was a

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

I guess because I had done some writing in school, they
thought I was the perfect candidate to be on the staff of the
Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission Wilderness Report
under Jim Gilligan. [pause] We split the project up into
various parts: we had an economic component, a philosophical
component, and an inventory component--

We should probably just step back and say what the project was
because only you and I might know.

The Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission was set up, I
think, in '59, funded mainly by Laurance Rockefeller, to do a
massive study of all recreation resources in the United States.
They farmed out the projects to various institutions and the
Wildlands Research Center, which was a non-profit spinoff of the
school of forestry—a grant application entity in effect—got the
contract to do the report on wilderness. I think it was mainly
through Jim Gilligan 's influence. He had written his Ph.D.
thesis on wilderness.

At Berkeley?

No, the University of Montana, I think, is where he wrote his
thesis. But he was the extension forester at Berkeley, and he
was also on the staff or the board of the Wildlands Research
Center. How he got the contract, I don't know, but he got it
anyway, and I thought that was very clever.

Were you interested in wilderness at that time?

I was interested in wilderness as an idea, and I loved the
outdoors and I always fished and--

But had you read Aldo Leopold and other wilderness philosophers?

No, I don't think I had. The reading that I had done that had
caught my interest was Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth
Meridian, which my mother loved and then encouraged me to read,
and all of Bernard DeVoto's books on the exploration of the West
--Across the Wide Missouri. There was a trilogy that Bernard
DeVoto did which was a wonderful history of the exploration of
the West. And I had read all of those--! had read a lot of
western history, which is wilderness, really, and that's where
the idea grew up. Not so much from the philosophers of the
wilderness like Aldo Leopold- -and I had read Thoreau, of course.
So I started reading all of these things: Aldo Leopold and, well,

28

there was lots and lots of stuff, I don't remember what it all
was—even the Bible had a lot about wilderness.

It was a hard time writing this thing.
Lage: Now, what was your assignment?

Pesonen: My assignment was to write about the wilderness idea. That was

part of my assignment. I had other assignments, but that was one
of them. And I struggled and struggled with that, and parts of
it were okay. Parts of it were the history of the wilderness
regulations by the Forest Service, which was pretty
straightforward. But there was this notion of what wilderness is
and what it means to people that confounded me. I mean, I could
feel it, but I couldn't say it—couldn't get it articulated.
That's what led to Wallace Stegner's Wilderness Letter. I
finally put down what I was trying to say in a letter to Stegner.
I chose Stegner because I had loved Beyond the Hundredth
Meridian, and I knew he was a professor of creative writing at
Stanford, and if anybody could do it, he could. I just picked
him out because I knew who he was.

Lage: Did you contact him directly, or did you go through somebody?

Pesonen: I just contacted him directly. I just asked him to help me. I
wrote him a letter. I may have called him up and discussed it a
little bit with him--I don't remember whether I did or not. I
did this all on my own. I don't think I even talked to Gilligan
about--! might have talked to Gilligan, but I just sort of--.
The idea just occurred to me.

And finally, we got the Wilderness Letter.1 Stegner sent a
copy to [David] Brower. Brower by this time was the towering
figure of the Sierra Club. He had launched its publication
program, he had fought the dams in the Grand Canyon and Glen
Canyon and lost one or two, but his main dream was to get the
Wilderness Act passed. The Wilderness Act had been introduced in
Congress each year and defeated by the mining and timber and
development interests of the West. It was the big environmental
legislative battle. It had been going on for several years.
Brower saw the Wilderness Letter as a valuable tool in lobbying
for the Wilderness bill. This was now 1961--late '60 or '61.
The Wilderness Act wasn't passed until '64.

'For a copy of the Wilderness Letter and Stegner's recollections about
writing it, see Wallace Stegner, The Artist as Environmental Advocate, an
oral history conducted by Ann Lage in 1982 (Regional Oral History Office,
1983).

29

Lage: The campaign had been going on for several years.

Pesonen: It had been going on for quite a few years. There was a whole

history involved with that that we don't need to go into. It was
started by Bob Marshall when he worked for the Forest Service.
He got the regulations SI and S2, regulations that set aside,
temporarily at least, parts of the National Forest as a kind of
wilderness.

Brower immediately wanted to publish the letter. I said
"No, it's my letter." [laughter]

Lage: Was that your first contact with Brower?

Pesonen: That was my first contact with Brower. I'd heard of him, but I'd
never met him. We had a little argument about it, and Vaux
mediated it. I felt a little possessory about that letter--it
was my idea, you know? Brower wanted it for his own reasons.
Vaux recognized that we couldn't own that letter; it was
Stegner's to do with what he wanted. It was his words, and it
was really his ideas, and I had just stimulated an event which
was probably going to happen anyway in one way or another. So
that's how I got to know Brower.

Lage: It ended up with Stewart Udall [secretary of the Interior] using
that letter as part of a speech.

Pesonen: Well, I don't remember that.

Lage: He read it at a Wilderness Conference, and then it became part of
the proceedings. I don't know if Stegner sent it to him, or
Brower.

Pesonen: Well, the Sierra Club, by that time, had annual or semi-annual

(biennial, rather) wilderness conferences. They were part of the
campaign to pass the Wilderness Act, and they published their
proceedings every year. I guess that's how it happened.

Staff Member for Assembly Fish and Game Committee; Counting Deer
Tags for Pauline Davis

Pesonen: Anyway, we finished the report and the report incorporated the
letter, and then I didn't know what I was going to do. I heard
that there was a job opened as staff to the Assembly Fish and
Game Committee. Well, here was everything I wanted: fishing,
hunting, making policy, changing the world — it sounded fine. So
I applied and I was hired by the chairperson of that committee,

30

an assemblywoman from Portola, up in Plumas County, Pauline

Davis. I had no idea what I was getting into. The Fish and Game
Committee was heavily lobbied by the commercial fishing

interests, and my objective was to get some kind of legislation
through to limit logging and its effect on streams. I talked

Pauline into putting on some hear ings --some interim committee

hearings --up the coast on logging and its effect on anadromous
fish.

Lage: Now what had started you with that concern?

Pesonen: Well, I think I had fished up there a lot, and I had seen the
horrible damage some of those logging operations had done. I
talked to people in Fish and Game and there were some people in
the Department of Fish and Game that had written widely about the
effect of logging on streams and lakes; they were concerned about
that. Caught my interest, anyway. I talked Pauline into holding
some hearings on that.

It was not a pleasant job. It was very political, and
Pauline was a very changeable woman. She had succeeded to that
seat after her husband died. Her husband had been the
assemblyman from that district before. He died and she ran for
it--

Lage: That was the way women became legislators in those days.

Pesonen: That's right. She was a great big, huge woman with a high

bouffant hairdo dyed bright red—bright auburn, anyway, and very
suspicious, very paranoid. You never knew where you stood with
her. There were two kinds of people in the world as far as she
was concerned. There were members of old pioneer families, who
were good, and snakes-in-the-grass, who were bad. One week I'd
come into the office, and she'd introduce me to a bunch of
lobbyists: "I want you to meet Dave Pesonen. He's a member of an
old pioneer family," [laughter] and I couldn't do anything wrong,
and the next week I'd come in and the door would be closed and
she'd be whispering and wouldn't talk to me, and I'd hear,
"Mumble. . .mumble. . .snake-in-the-grass." You just never knew.

Lage: And you worked directly for her?

Pesonen: It was still a little office. She had a staff of two women
secretaries, and herself, and me. The two secretaries and I
shared an outer office. She was at war with the Department of
Fish and Game, mainly over their hunting regulations for deer in
the northeast part of the state. She didn't believe their
statistics, so one day she made me go over to the Department of
Fish and Game and collect all of the deer tags that had been

31

turned in by deer hunters and re-do all the statistics by hand.
Now here were these crumpled pieces of cardboard, you know, with
entries written on a stub pencil in the headlights of a truck
someplace out in the woods with deer hair and blood all over
them, with how many points the deer had and where they'd been
shot. Boxes and boxes of these things, and I had to just sit
there and count them.

Lage: What was her purpose?

Pesonen: She believed that the public statistics and the raw data were
phonied up.

Lage: Did she want more deer hunting or less deer hunting--

Pesonen: She wanted more deer hunting; she wanted less doe hunting. Well,
my numbers came out practically even with the figures of the
Department of Fish and Game. Then she thought I was in cahoots
with the Department of Fish and Game. It really became pretty
intolerable.

I met some close friends there in Sacramento, people who
remained friends for a long time. Dick Patsey, who's now a judge
out in Contra Costa County, was on the staff of the
Constitutional Revision Commission. Somehow he and I met and
became very good friends, and we're still good friends. My
friend Bob Connelly was still around, and we spent a lot of time
together.

Lage: Is he the one who put you on to the job?

Pesonen: No, he didn't put me on to the job. I don't remember who put me
onto the job. I think it was Vaux or Starker Leopold.

Working for Dave Brower and the Sierra Club. 1961-1962

Pesonen: One day Dave Brower called up and said that he wanted me to be on
his staff, around early 1962. It was a chance to get out of this
intolerable situation working for Pauline, get back to the Bay
Area, live in San Francisco, work down on Bush Street in the
Mills Tower with this towering figure, Dave Brower. It was
ideal; it was perfect. I was single and I liked San Francisco.
I've always had this ambivalence about cities. I think cities
are a wonderful institution when they're right. I loved--who
wrote The City in History- -Lewis Mumford. I loved that book.
I've always been a bit eclectic in my interests. I wouldn't want

32

to go out and just live out in the woods and be a hermit. I like
what goes on in cities. I think cities are great institutions.
And San Francisco in the fifties, in the early sixties, was a
great city. A great city if you were a young, single person. So
I accepted with alacrity. Well, Brower didn't know what he
wanted to do with me.

Lage: Did Brower know you other than from that one--

Pesonen: I think only from the Wilderness Letter and that whole incident.

Lage: Interesting that he chose you on that basis.

Pesonen: Well, Brower had a way of doing that. He always has. Of finding
people he's real simpatico with, young people in particular, and
cultivating them. In any event, I accepted. It wasn't clear
what my job was. I was to edit books. I was to be the club
spokesperson at the Board of Forestry meetings on revisions to
the Forest Practice Act, a jack of all trades. Sometimes I'd be
editing books, and sometimes it wasn't clear what I was supposed
to do.

Lage: But were you busy all of the time?

Pesonen: Sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes I was a little bored. But it was
enough to just be in the penumbra of Brewer's magic.

Lage: What do you remember that you could--

Pesonen: Well, I remember that he was chimerical, and he was full of

spontaneous ideas. He was not a good planner or manager at all,
but people loved him because he is who he is . I remember him as
wanting to be surrounded with young people, and having ideas. He
was very much like Jerry Brown in a way. I remember--! was
thinking one time when I worked for Jerry Brown that he was a
successor to my experience with Brower.

Lage: An interesting comparison. It seems to fit when you're--

Pesonen: David had big ideas, but he had a hard time reducing them to
operations. He needed a lot of people to do that for him. I
guess that's why he surrounded himself with people who could
write, who could speak, who could think, who could plan- -because
he's not a planner.

Lage:

Was the staff very large at that point?

33

Pesonen: No, it wasn't very large. There was a small staff in the Mills
Tower in San Francisco. The library was there; the whole office
was there; the club was a much smaller organization then.

Lage: Bob Golden was there?

Pesonen: Bob Golden was there. I think he was sort of the chief of staff.
I don't remember who was the head of finances --somebody had a
financial role and--

Lage: Not Cliff Rudden. He wasn't there yet--

*

Pesonen: Yes, Cliff Rudden was there. These are names that are coming
back to me now. Bob and Fay Golden. I haven't seen them for
years. Cliff Rudden, Basse Bunnelle--

Lage: She was handling club outings.

Pesonen: I think she was doing outings. Who was the editor of the
Bulletin?

Lage: Nash? Hugh Nash?

Pesonen: No, Hugh Nash came later. This was Hugh's predecessor. Tall,
angular, Ichabod Crane kind of person.

Pesonen: I can't remember now. It'll come back to me.

Lage: I think that was a period when conflict between Brower and the
board of directors was beginning. Did you have a sense of that
as a staff person?

Pesonen: I was not so aware of that.

Lage: You wouldn't have been privy to all that.

Pesonen: No, I wasn't very privy to that.

And I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

A Summer of Waiting and Writing. 1962; Security Clearance
Problems for United Nations Job and Atomic Park Articles

Lage:

Pesonen:

Did you think of it in those terms?
all my life?"

"Whether I want to do this

Lage:

Pesonen:

Well, I didn't know what career I wanted. I didn't want to go
and work in traditional forestry, which was essentially managing
timberland for cutting. I had studied it, but I didn't practice
it. When I was in forestry school, I worked two summers with
Southern Pacific, marking timber and cruising timber, and it was
wonderful, healthy work- -survey ing of property lines and--.
Those were great summer jobs in college, but I didn't want to do
that all my life. It didn't have any policy implications; it was
remote and I liked the city. It's the ambivalence I've always
felt about cities and the wilderness--! like them both; and it
was too much of one thing. It didn't have any intellectual
excitement to it.

So it's intellectual excitement. It didn't have a particular
social purpose, which you mentioned earlier-
Well, I didn't see it as a bad social purpose. I wasn't against
logging. I wasn't against cutting timber; it just didn't
interest me as something I wanted to do with my life. It was
very limited — limited scope. There was no vision to it. So I
still didn't know what I wanted to do. I think it was Vaux or
Zivnuska who, while I was working for the club, told me about a
position as a forestry advisor for the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations in what was then Tanganyika.
The prospect of going to Africa and being a lone forester in
Africa was just so exciting; I immediately put in for it. The UN
even then was a huge bureaucracy, and the paper work was
horrendous. But while I was working for the Sierra Club, I
continued to process this application to the FAO and to get
letters of recommendations from Vaux, and Zivnuska, and other
people.

And I started flying lessons, because I understood that I
would have a little airplane in Africa, and I could fly all
around. I had started taking pilot's lessons when I was in
Sacramento, and I had soloed by this time. I didn't have much
money to pay for it, so I was going out to Petaluma to some
little back-country airport which had old airplanes and doing my
flying lessons up there.

This UN thing just dragged on and on. Then along came
Bodega, which was its own story--its own saga. While I was doing

35

Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Bodega, which we'll come back to, it began to look like I was
going to get the FAO job.

Right in the middle of your Bodega campaign?
Yes. And I quit the Club over Bodega--

We'll get into that more, too.

--and took the summer to just sort out what I was going to do
with my life and wait for this FAO thing to come along. Well, I
was held up by the lack of a security clearance. There was an
executive order that had been issued by Eisenhower that all
American citizens working for the UN had to have security
clearances. I have no idea why, but it was the heart of the cold
war, and that was a reflection of our paranoia at that time.

The paranoia that the UN was actually a Communist organization.

Right. And I couldn't get a security clearance. I was held up
because when I had been in the army I had been denied a security
clearance. That's another long story.

When I was in high school, good family friends were the
Waegell family. They had a ranch outside Sacramento, where I
worked on my holidays and summers, starting when I was in junior
high school, I think, driving tractors, baling hay, digging
fenceposts, doing everything it took to run a ranch. The
Waegells were Communists.

Communist farmers in Sacramento?

Mrs. Waegell was an immigrant from England. She was a dyed-in-
the-wool Marxist, subscriber to the People's World. The Waegell
boys--two twins, Jim and George--and their younger brother, Jack,
were about five or six years older than I was, and so they would
head out to town and I would be stuck in the farmhouse kitchen
with Mrs. Waegell. She would sit me down and read me the
People's World: about all of the miseries in the world, about the
racism, about the poor people, about wars, and the oppression of
capitalism. And I ate it all up. [laughter] Of course, I'd go
back to school and spout it. One of my girlfriends in high
school, it turned out, had thought I was a dyed-in-the-wool
Communist.

Then I had had to apply for a security clearance when I was
in the army, because I was in a headquarters company that did
training maneuvers and had access to classified documents. In
Texas, I was a clerk-typist for a corps headquarters, third corps

36

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

at Fort Hood, Texas. I had put in for a security clearance
because I had to for that position, and it didn't come through by
the time I went to Europe, and I had to renew it when I got to
Europe. One day, two security people showed up at this little
office I had in Ingrande, France, and they closeted themselves
with the warrant officer for whom I worked. Everybody seemed
very serious about all of this. I wasn't very ideological, you
know; the thing I always looked forward to was when Time magazine
arrived at the PX every week. [laughter]

Had you subscribed to People's World?

No, I hadn't. But they had done a thorough background
investigation on me.

That's frightening.

My parents' friends were interviewed,
their hands on a real spy.

They thought they had

And when this girlfriend in high school--

This girlfriend in high school had started it, apparently, and
then it had grown. You know the paranoia of the cold war. There
was a dossier on me, which I now have a copy of, with names
redacted so I don't know who all the people were, but it's a
paranoid treatise. I was called down to Poitiers, which was the
headquarters for that part of France, to the central headquarters
of this security arm of the army, and put through an awful
grilling about all of my background.

Were they asking you about beliefs?
actual action?

Philosophical beliefs, or

Beliefs, people--! don't remember it all. But it was a very
unpleasant experience. I would have to take the train down
there- -a couple of times I had to travel down there for this
interrogation. At one point, I remember, I was put through an
interrogation right out of a television show. I mean, I was
stripped and one guy was threatening me, another guy was being
nice to me--it was the old Mutt and Jeff technique. And they
wrote up a statement of what my position was, and it was full of
falsehoods, and I refused to sign it. I was kept there for a day
or so, and finally I edited it down and signed some edited
version of this thing, just to get out of there. I've never seen
it; I don't know what it looks like, I don't know what it said.

My father was a government employee, and his job could be in
jeopardy if some of this rubbed off on him, and I got pretty

37

worried. But that came back to haunt me when I was applying for
this FAO job. Apparently they had resurrected all of this
record, and I couldn't get the clearance.

Lage: That is really bizarre, but probably not that unusual.

Pesonen: Not in those days. So that summer was waiting for this thing to
be cleared up- -that summer of '62. Since I didn't have anything
else to do, I decided I would write up the Bodega story, and
that's what led to that pamphlet, which you have a copy of,
Visit to the Atomic Park.1 I just closeted myself in a little
old room over here on Durant Street over a garage and got a night
job working for Joe [John B.] Neilands on campus making
ferrochrome, which was an organic compound he had invented which
supposedly had wonderful properties. It just required going into
the lab and setting it up and starting this thing bubbling away
and then tending it until the product came out the other end.

Lage: Perfect for a writer.

Pesonen: Yes, it was a wonderful job because all I had to do was go over
there at night and tend it and make it work. But I got paid for
all of that time, so I had plenty of time to write. I got into
this story [of PG&E's plan to build a nuclear power plant at
Bodega Bay] , which is another story, and just thought that I had
stumbled onto one of the great evils of all time and that the
story had to be told. I worked all summer—well, I hitchhiked to
Colorado and visited an old girlfriend for a couple of weeks and
then hitchhiked up to Canada with some people I'd met on the
train coming back from Colorado, went up to British Columbia and
just saw the country, and then came back and decided to write
that story. I thought about all this all the way. I thought '
about that FAO job and about Bodega and — turning it, in my mind,
to something that had to be dealt with. Finally the FAO job did
come through.

Lage: You finally got clearance?

Pesonen: It came through in the fall. I think, maybe, it was October or
November of '62, and by that time, I had a leadership role in
Bodega and had written the pamphlet . This great evil needed to
be resolved and I wasn't going to leave it. So I reluctantly
turned down the FAO job and never did go to Africa. Sometimes I
wish I had; sometimes I wish I hadn't.

Lage: Let's stop here and pick up Bodega next time.

'David E. Pesonen, A Visit to the Atomic Park, a pamphlet reprinted
from Sebastopal Times articles on 9/27/62, 10/4/62, 10/11/62, and 10/18/62,
available in The Bancroft Library.

38

New Left Philosophies and Bodega Bay
[Interview 2: January 23, 1992 ]ti

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

We want to get into the Bodega story today, beginning with a
sense of where you were when you discovered Bodega. I have
brought to your attention this newly submitted article by Thomas
Wellock1 where he calls you, "...part of the rising radical
sentiment of the emerging New Left," and he refers several times
to the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, which came later [in
1964], and sort of implies that you were a harbinger of that. I
wondered if you could tell me something about your political
beliefs or activities at that time.

Well, I don't recall that I was very political at all. I
certainly didn't have any coherent political theory, left or
right. I was a liberal and my parents were both Democrats. My
father had favored Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential
elections, and Wallace was a populist and a liberal.

Was there a lot of political talk around the dinner table?

No, not very much. No, I don't think we talked politics very
much. It just seemed like--. My parents were brought up through
the Depression and there were a lot of people in those days who
were brought up through the Depression who were very strongly
Democratic and favored government intervention. What's called
the New Left, which was a different movement entirely, as I
understand it, was not a term that I knew anything about.

It wasn't really in use at the time.
a couple of years.

He's putting it back on you

Yes. I was very excited about the Free Speech Movement; I
thought the University was wrong, but I never went to any of
those demonstrations. I was particularly interested in the
Bodega context because the University, in my view, as I wrote in
A Visit to the Atomic Park, [1962] had caved in to pressure from
PG&E and the Atomic Energy Commission with whom it contracted to
run the labs [the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley and the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory], and [Glenn T.] Seaborg was a
nuclear physicist who was chancellor at that time [1958-1961].

'Thomas Wellock, "The Battle for Bodega Bay: The Sierra Club and
Nuclear Power, 1958-1964," later published in California History, Vol.
LXXI, No. 2, Summer 1992.

39

Lage:

That made it fairly easy for him to pressure the marine biology
faculty to mute their interest in Bodega Bay. So I thought the
University was a culprit.

So it made you sympathetic with the Free Speech Movement when it
came around.

Pesonen: Well, all the Free Speech Movement did was expose what I thought
was a very closed, hierarchical, reactionary administration in
the University, which I hadn't really exposed. So I thought the
Free Speech Movement was just fine and the principle was a sound
and traditional one: the right of students to have views and
express them on campus. It wasn't a very complicated —

Lage: It wasn't something that came up while you were on campus, was
it? That's not thought of as too lively a time, politically.

Pesonen: It wasn't. It wasn't a lively time, and I wasn't politically
active on campus. I didn't join any clubs--. I was too busy
getting through school. I had to work; I worked every summer and
I worked during school. I am a slow studier. I had to work hard
to get good grades. I wasn't interested in extracurricular
stuff; I was going to succeed in school, get out, and get on with
my life.

Lage: You seem to have a habit of mind, though, of being challenging.

Is this true? In fact, Henry Vaux told me he remembers that from
school as well as later, that you challenged ideas and authority.
Do you think of yourself that way?

Pesonen: Well, I think of myself as having a lot of confidence in my views
and as being challenging. Yes, I get a certain amount of
amusement out of it. It's recreational.

Lage: The other thing that I think ties you into this New Left mold is
your interest in citizen participation in government. Was that a
view that you had before Bodega or did it come out of your
experience with what happened at Bodega?

Pesonen: Well, I don't think I ever articulated it until the Bodega case;
it was just a given. It was one of those assumptions I had, that
I hadn't formulated into a theory. I mean, I don't think that
way. There are certain things that I just think are fair and
right.

Lage: So the situation just struck you as something that wasn't right?

Pesonen: Yes. Then, I suppose, in order to explain my position, I had to
articulate that view, because it is important to me to have a

40

Lage:

Pesonen:

reason for what I do. If I don't have a reason, then I begin to
question whether my position is correct. And, you know, I'm an
advocate, too. But I think I try to advocate honestly, and I
have to believe it first. [laughter] If I don't believe it, I
don't expect other people to believe it, and I don't think I ever
said anything I didn't believe. But, you know, your views change
as you get older and wiser, too. I was young and the views I had
were, today, very conventional. Very conventional views of
civics. Just high school civics. It wasn't anything more
complicated than that.

Well, I sometimes think that our generation tended to believe
what they said in the civics classes. Now kids are much more
cynical. That's why we could have these idealistic bursts,
because we really believed what we'd been taught, and then were
horrified when it wasn't true.

Exactly. We were surprised, disappointed, and angry that
everything we had just accepted as a matter of faith was subject
to question. It was very threatening to some people.

Public Power vs. Private Power and the Bodega Issue

Lage: One other thing that comes up is your father having been with the
Bureau of Reclamation- -that this would affect your views of
public power versus private power.

Pesonen: Well, I did believe in public power.

Lage: Was that something your father had talked about over the years?

Pesonen: He had talked about it, yes. He was an idealist, and a very fine
man. He was very proud of what the Bureau of Reclamation was
doing with the Central Valley Project, and he believed in it. He
worked hard at it, and he devoted his career to it, and he
involved me and my brother. He took us with him on his trips,
and he told us about California, and about how two-thirds of the
water fell in the north part of the state, and two-thirds of the
arable land was in the south part of the state, and it just made
sense to move some of that water down where the land was . I
never questioned that at that time. I have grave questions about
it now, but it made a lot of sense then.

We would go to Shasta Dam, we'd go to Friant Dam, we'd go to
these big federal projects underway, and it was sort of a Woody
Guthrie view of life. Here was electricity being made available

at cheap rates to the public generally, financed by the public,
not for greed, not for private profit. It just made a lot of
sense. We look back on the Central Valley Project as an
ecological disaster, but people didn't know those things then.

Lage: But he was talking about power and not just water.

Pesonen: He was talking about both.

Lage: About public power and the benefits of--

Pesonen: Right. We lived in Sacramento, which was a public power city.
In a bitter battle, Sacramento had purchased the distribution
system of PG&E, I think in the forties or late thirties. So
public power was the kind of power we had; we had the Sacramento
Municipal Utilities District, and it bought its power from the
Bureau of Reclamation, and it was cheap, and everybody lived
better. It was that view of the world.

Lage: Do you think that had any effect on your attitude towards PG&E?

Pesonen: I don't think it had anything to do with my view of PG&E at

Bodega Bay. I've been accused of that a lot, but I didn't see it
as a public power issue. If the Bureau of Reclamation had been
building that reactor out there, I'd have been just as dismayed
about it. I might have attacked it in a different way, but I
wouldn't have favored it. PG&E accused us of that, and there was
a very right-wing publication in Berkeley called the Toxin. It
was a real product of the cold war. It saw conspiracy theories
everywhere and reds hiding under every bed, and we were accused
of being fronts for a Communist takeover of private property; all
kinds of stuff like that, and it just rolled off my back like
water off a duck. It didn't seem to deter people anymore. The
cold war, in some way- -McCarthy ism was over—it took a long time
for the carcass to realize it was dead and fall over, but it
didn't have the sting that it might have had in the fifties.

Lage: Nobody dug out that record of yours?
Pesonen: My record in the army, you mean?
Lage: Yes, the security report.

Pesonen: You know, I seem to recall that somebody published something
about that, but I don't remember.

Lage: It wasn't a major thing. I don't find any trace of it.
Pesonen: Yes. I don't know what difference that would have made anyway.

Sierra Club Representative to PUG Hearings on Bodega, May 1962

Lage: Well, shall we start chronologically, or at least drop into the
Bodega Bay issue where you entered it, when you were with the
Sierra Club?

Pesonen: Okay, we can do that. I was working for Dave Brower, and my

title was Conservation Editor. It sounds more lofty than it was.

It was a jack-of-all-trades position, mainly because Dave Brower
just wanted somebody like me around to do various things.

Lage: Were you assigned mainly to the Bulletin?

Pesonen: No, I didn't work on the Bulletin much. He was promoting the

book program of the club then, it was just getting started. So
he would get manuscripts, and he'd want me to review each
manuscript and give him an opinion on them, or edit them if he
had decided that the club would publish them. And since I had a
forestry background and there was always some issue with the
State Board of Forestry on forest practice rules, I would be
called upon occasionally to testify for the club at the Board of
Forestry. Then anything else that he thought I had a talent that
he could address to the problem. Sometimes it had to do with
what the library should buy- -it was a wonderful job; I did all
kinds of things. The club was very small then. The staff was
very small, and we were one-on-one with Brower, who was a very
charismatic person.

So one day--. You know, I didn't pay any attention to
Bodega, I didn't know anything about it. I was a young, single
guy, living in San Francisco and having a great time. I wasn't
politically active or anything else. He handed me the Gilliam
column that had been published, I think, in February of 1962,
lamenting the loss of Bodega and the Kortum letter to the editor
[see Appendix A], and some notice that the PUC [Public Utilities
Commission] had reopened the proceedings as a result of this
attention, and he asked me to go over and find out what was going
on and to give him a report. So I did.

I can't remember the sequence now, but it was right about
that time that I went over to PG&E to do a little research and
went up to the engineering department, just cold, and talked to
some clerical person and said, "I'm from the Sierra Club, and I'd
like to see your file on Bodega Bay." They handed me a file and
I sat down at a table and I began to see all kinds of things in
this file.

Lage: It was a very trusting gesture on their part.

Pesonen: It was a very small file. I didn't see the whole file.

Apparently, 1 was not in the engineering department. I was in
the land department, or it was a file from the land department
that ended up in the engineering department, but it had the
exchanges of correspondence between top management and the
political arm of the company- -the public affairs department and
the land department—on rounding up political support for the
plan from local service groups, from the Board of Supervisors,
from the planning commission. It reeked of a kind of arrogance
that it was a foregone conclusion that the local elected
officials were going to do whatever PG&E wanted them to, and were
going to say whatever PG&E wanted them to, and pass whatever
resolutions PG&E wrote for them. It was that flagrant. It was
so flagrant it was unembarrassed. [laughter]

Lage: They believed it so truly—

Pesonen: They believed it too. It was in good faith, that was the problem
with it. [laughter] Well, I made some notes from this file.
Some of them were extravagant and direct indications that they
had local government in their pocket.

Then I went over to the PUC hearing [May 1962] and talked to
the people who had come down from Bodega Bay: Rose Gaffney, and
the Ruebels, and the whole cast of characters. Ray and Marion
Ruebel ran the Chamber of Commerce in Bodega Bay and had a little
real estate business. They were very wonderful people—they 're
both dead now—you know, just simple midwestern folk who'd moved
out here to kind of semi-retire and sell a little real estate,
and they had a little real estate office right there in town.
They were outraged by the history, since '58, of PG&E's hiding
the ball and not disclosing what kind of plant it would be, the
destruction of the harbor from the road [the road to the plant
site in Campbell Cove was built in the tideflats of the harbor],
the threat of power lines going over Doran Park and being a
scenic wall on the harbor entrance. You know, they'd lived there
for its tranquility and its beauty. The fishing community was
very upset that the traditional way of careening their boats on
the gentle mudflats on the west side of the harbor would be taken
from them by the riprap along the road PG&E wanted to build.

And then there were some other little agendas of people in
town who were going to get a good deal- -who were going to get
some money from PG&E and build another marina and be in
competition with the other, existing, marina owners. There was a
lot of that kind of thing going on at another level that had
probably helped to stir all of this up. As in a lot of little
towns, people find amazing ways to dislike each other, and
suspect each other, and feed their gossip mill.

44

Well, I didn't pay any attention to that part, but this was
clearly a group of people who had tried very hard to be heard and
hadn't had an opportunity, or hadn't been listened to.

Lage: There had been previous hearings.

Pesonen: Oh, there had been a hearing before the Corps of Engineers on the
road that had been held at the grange hall up in Bodega in, I
think, 1960 or '61 [February 15, 1962], and that had been a
riotous hearing from press accounts. There was Joel Hedgpeth,
who had watched it from both the inside and the outside. Inside,
because of his acquaintance with many of the marine biology
faculty at Berkeley and his awesome archiving powers and his
natural suspicious bent of mind. There was Karl Kortum who had
grown up in Sonoma County and sailed out of Bodega Bay, and loved
its beauty too. There were just a mob of people there.

It became very clear to me that they didn't have a plan.
They weren't organized. They were angry; their testimony would
be focused on whatever was personally of concern to them, but
there was no coherent theory as to what they were doing. So I
thought, well, here's a role for me--to pull this together and
give it a theme. I just emerged as a leader.

I went back and reported to Brower, and he said keep on
doing it. Well, then it started to hit the papers, and then his
board started getting uneasy.

Lage: Didn't you testify at the PUC hearing?

Pesonen: I did testify.

Lage: Was Phil Berry [Sierra Club activist] involved in the hearing?

Pesonen: Phil didn't testify. Phil was a recent law school graduate from
Stanford, and he came over and helped with the examination of
some of the witnesses.

Lage: You could examine witnesses from the floor?

Pesonen: It was a weird proceeding. Anybody can stand up in the audience,
and examine a witness. The hearing officer just says, "Okay,
it's your turn; okay, it's your turn," and points at people in
the audience, and they come forward to the podium. They are
untrained, make speeches- -a lawyer would be horrified at the form
of questioning, but that wasn't the kind of proceeding it was.
So that went on, and I testified, and I also examined some
witnesses.

Lage:

45

Did you testify based on some of the things you'd found out from
PG&E files?

Pesonen: Yes. By this time we knew that we couldn't win this case before
the PUC; we had to win it in the newspapers. So I set it up for
the dramatic moment to come when I would disclose these quotes I
had plucked out of this file that had been shown me at PG&E,
about their, in our terms, having corrupted the local government.
I was being examined by William Knecht, who was the farm bureau
lawyer—the California Farm Bureau Federation had joined with
PG&E as sort of a petitioner. Knecht was a lawyer for them, and
he and John [C.] Morrissey both examined me for a little while,
and then they had the good sense not to ask me the question, "How
do you know that PG&E has corrupted the Board of Supervisors?"
because they didn't want the answer.

Well, 1 thought they might not ask the question, so I had
planted the question with one of our cohorts in the audience,
[laughter] Tony Sargent, who worked over here at the Lawrence
Labs. When the PG&E lawyers—when Morrissey and Knecht didn't
ask that question, Tony came forward and asked the question. I
brought out my black briefcase, and I put it up there next to the
microphone, and I snapped the snaps on it, and it went "click"
throughout the room. You should hear Karl Kortum describe it; it
was a high moment of drama. I lifted the lid on this little
black leather briefcase and pulled out these notes and then began
to describe the circumstances: how I had gone over to the
building at 245 Market Street and got in the elevator and pushed
the button number eleven, or whatever it was, and went up and
asked the receptionist if I could see the file. At that point
there was a flurry like somebody had thrown a fox in a chicken
yard at the PG&E counsel table, and people started running
around, running out of the room, grabbing phones, and I don't
know what else they did, but it clearly had them all excited. I
described what I'd seen and got some quotes into the record, and
that was a big moment of drama. That's all it was, I mean, it
didn't go to the merits of the case very much at all, but it got
some attention.

Focusing on Seismic Hazards and Quitting the Sierra Club Staff

Pesonen: As a result of that, as a result of that sort of sense of drama
and sense of the need for coherence in approach to the case, and
my recognition--! think I was the source of it— to begin focusing
on the seismic hazards--

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

That's when you decided to focus on seismic hazards?

I saw that there was an issue there; there were some facts to
support it; there was a reason. There was a geologist from the
state Division of Mines and Geology. His name was Koenig--!
don't remember his first name—but he had published a little
paper in a quarterly publication that the Division of Mines and
Geology put out on Bodega Head. The cover had a map of fault
lines. We asked Koenig to testify, and he was very cautious in
his testimony, but this was not a fabricated issue. This was
real, and it was a serious concern. We weren't just exploiting
it to stop the plant—we were doing that, too— but we carried it
on the merits. There was a serious question here, whether the
plant should be built there.

The PUC was the first place where we started to open that
up, and it was my perception that that was something we should
focus our attention on. Through that process, I just emerged as
the leader.

Through the process of these hearings?
occurred?

Is that when all this

Pesonen: Yes.

Lage: But you are still with the Sierra Club?

Pesonen: I'm still with the Sierra Club.

Lage: And what happened with that relationship?

Pesonen: Well, that fell apart later, but by that time I had applied to

the Food and Agriculture Organization for that job in Tanganyika,
and it was held up because I needed a security clearance and I
was a long time getting it. I didn't see any future at the
Sierra Club for me- -I didn't want to be Dave Brower's flunky all
my life.

Lage: I had the impression that the club, or some members of the club,
were disturbed by the testimony at the PUC and that was the
reason you left. Is that inaccurate?

Pesonen: That, ultimately, was part of the reason I left. There came a

point where Dave asked me to report to the executive committee on
what to do next on Bodega Bay. Hearings before the PUC had
concluded. The decision had not been entered. This was probably
June of 1962.

Lage:

Those are the minutes I can't find. [laughter]

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Are they?
meeting.

Well, there probably weren't any minutes to that

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

You think that was more of an informal meeting.

I think it was an informal meeting. If I recall correctly,
present were myself, Dave Brower, Lewis Clark, Dick [Richard M.]
Leonard, I don't recall whether Ed Wayburn was there or not. It
wasn't a big meeting. It was in Dave's off ice--right off the
library there in the Mills Tower. I gave a report that wrapped
up what we had learned from the hearings . I said there was a
serious question whether a plant at Bodega would be safe because
of its proximity to the San Andreas fault. I firmly believed
that if we continued to pursue that issue we could stop the plant
from being built, but if we didn't pursue that issue, we couldn't
stop the plant from being built. If we restricted our public
statements to lamenting the loss of another scenic part of the
coast it would have no effect on the AEC's [Atomic Energy
Commission] decision or the PUC's decision.

At that point Dick Leonard- -if my recollection is correct,
and it's not very bright in my mind, what's bright in my mind is
the whole setting and how I felt; I was suddenly under siege and
surprised by the antagonism I had generated with some board
members- -Dick Leonard shook his finger at me and said, "Don't you
ever mention atomic power or atomic safety. You can't do that in
the name of the club. We are in support of nuclear power. It's
an environmentally wonderful thing: it will mean that we won't
have to build any more dams in the Grand Canyon." I think that
was a genuine view on his part, and what I was saying was
inconsistent with club policy.

It's true. They had suggested atomic power as an alternative to
hydroelectric for years.

So I was in a position where the people who made policy had said
that I couldn't, as an employee, make a public statement
inconsistent with policy.

But you don't recall that this was a formal vote of the executive
committee or anything like that?

No. I don't recall any formal vote.

Did anybody step up and disagree with Dick Leonard?

Well, no. They weren't so vigorous, although some of the other
people present were more conciliatory toward me and the spot it
put me in. Leonard was not friendly at all at that meeting.

48

Lage: Somewhere I read, and I can't remember what I read this in, that
he read you the so-called "gag" rule — they passed in 1959 to keep
Dave Brower from maligning public officials.

Pesonen: Oh, well I had something like that, but I don't recall attaching
much significance to that. That was not what was the matter- -

Lage: The thing for you was the atomic issue.

Pesonen: Yes. Now that you mention it, I do remember something about that
gag rule, but that was just procedural.

Lage: But it was important to Dick Leonard and others.

Pesonen: It was important to them, but what was important to me was that
Leonard was focusing on the substance of what I said. I wasn't
maligning anyone.

**

Pesonen: I guess by implication the AEC and the higher management of PG&E
were being maligned, for doing something stupid [laughter],
that's what I was calling it. I was calling the whole thing a
threat to public health and safety as well as to a very beautiful
place. But that wasn't the real issue. He did not want me
talking about nuclear safety. That troubled me a lot, and I
thought about that for a while, and I decided that I didn't know
what I wanted to do, but that was not a tenable position for me.
So I quit.

Lage: Do you remember when you quit?

Pesonen: I quit at the end of June, I think. I'm pretty sure that it was
about the end of June. I didn't have any clear plan of what I
was going to do. I was still waiting for this FAO job to come
through. I had saved a little money, and I hitchhiked to
Colorado to visit a girlfriend and I just kept thinking about
this thing. I was gone for about a month- -spent a couple of
weeks in Aspen. And then, on the way back, I met a fellow on the
train who was going to British Columbia to go mountain climbing.
I had never been to British Columbia, so I talked him into- -he
was going to meet his ride in Salt Lake, and so I got off in Salt
Lake with him and drove with them way up to Revelstoke, British
Columbia, and then I hitchhiked back home.

Bodega Head, Proposed site of PG&E Nuclear Power Plant, from
A Visit to the Atomic Park

49

III CAMPAIGN TO PRESERVE BODEGA HEAD AND HARBOR, SUMMER 1962-
FALL 1963

A Visit to the Atomic Park

Pesonen: All of this time, I was thinking about this problem; this Bodega
thing was just eating at me, and it began to sort itself out. By
the time 1 got back, the FAO position still hadn't come through,
and I was broke, so I moved in with some friends down the street
here and got from Joel Hedgpeth his complete clippings file on
the history of Bodega going back to '58, and I just sat down and
read every thing he'd clipped, and every note he made, and every
letter he'd written with [Congressman] Clem Miller. From that,
emerged what happened. If Hedgpeth had not done that, I think
that plant might have got built.

Hedgpeth was a meticulous keeper of records. Everything
that appeared that had any direct or tangential relevance to what
was happening at Bodega or in the field of nuclear power, he
pasted up in bound volumes. [Joel Hedgpeth 's correspondence and
clippings on Bodega are available in The Bancroft Library.] They
were about two inches thick, two or three inches thick, of old
newspaper clippings. There had been a very good reporter on the
Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Don Engdahl, who had covered the story
well, who quoted these public officials saying really dumb things
like ["Nin"] Guidotti saying, "It's so beautiful out there; it
would be a shame not to build something on it." [laughter] The
kinds of things that just skewered themselves.

I made up my mind that this was so important a story that it
had to be told, and I would write a manuscript about it. I had
no idea who the publisher would be, I didn't really know who the
audience was going to be.

50

Lage: And you weren't hooked up with the association [the Northern

California Association to Preserve Bodega Bay and Harbor] yet, I
mean, officially?

Pesonen: During that summer it was pretty quiescent. It never was a very
formal organization, anyway. It had a name, but that's all. It
didn't have a letterhead, it didn't have a formal membership. It
was a small group of people—Joe Neilands, Karl Kortum, Doris
Sloan, Harold Gilliam, Tony Sargent, Phil Flint, the Ruebels up
in Bodega Bay, and certainly Hazel Bonneke--her name was then;
it's now Mitchell—she was a waitress at the Tides restaurant.
She was one of the real active people, and still is, up there.
She was active in the petition that's just been launched a few
weeks ago to prohibit the State Department of Parks and
Recreation from imposing entrance fees in coastal parks. But it
was a very loose group, and it wasn't active that summer. We
kept expecting the PUC to issue a decision any day, and so I was
racing against the clock. I wanted the story told before the PUC
made its decision.

I rented a little room, and, as I told you last time, Joe
Neilands gave me a night job in the biochemistry department lab
running a lab procedure that he had set up as part of his
research— it didn't require very much of my time. I made some
money; I had enough to support myself and pay my rent. I just
buried myself in this material and writing this story: what was
the University's role, what was the Atomic Energy Commission's
role, what was PG&E's role, what was the role of the Department
of Parks and Recreation and the county of Sonoma? How could this
thing happen?

By that time I was convinced that I was on to something that
was, to me, almost a metaphysical disaster. It was so wrong— it
was just wrong in every possible way. It was scientifically
wrong, it was morally wrong, it was politically wrong; it was
just wrong. I didn't feel that I could just go out and say it
was wrong; I wanted to prove it, and I wanted to prove it with
evidence. This clipping file that Hedgpeth had pulled together
over four years collapsed the story into one place so that, if
you had read all those clippings over a period of four years you
wouldn't have seen the story, but there was a pattern— you could
see what had happened when they were all condensed.

Lage:

So that was the basis of the article?

Pesonen: That was the major source on which I relied. I also went out and
interviewed a bunch of people .

51

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

I finished the manuscript and I sent it to Karl Kortum to
look at, and he was enormously impressed with it, and he sent it
to his brother Bill, who was also very active—Bill and his wife
Lucy--

And they lived up in Sonoma County.

And they lived in Petaluma. Bill's clients were mainly dairy
farmers up there.

He was a veterinarian?

He was a veterinarian. He was afraid of the contamination with
radioactive iodine of the dairylands. There had been an accident
in Windscale, in England, in 1958 at a plutonium production
reactor. It had had a fire in the plutonium and had released a
huge cloud of radio- iodine, which had contaminated most of the
milk in that part of England. From the press reports anyway, the
milk had all had to be dumped.

Between that accident

Do you remember who made that connection?
and Bodega?

I made that connection.
You recalled the accident?

In all the research I did to prepare this manuscript I read a lot
of other things. Hedgpeth's clippings told me what had happened
at Bodega, but it didn't tell me anything about nuclear power or
past nuclear accidents.

Then there was a series of articles, and I don't remember
how I came upon them, in the Massachusetts Law Quarterly by a
fellow named James B. Muldoon, and I talked to Muldoon. I think
Muldoon's dead now, but I remember carrying on a long
correspondence with Muldoon. He was a lawyer, and his brother
had been very high up in the Eisenhower administration. His
brother had leaked to him a lot of information about nuclear
power. In the late fifties, there had been a proposal for a
nuclear waste disposal facility in Massachusetts, and Muldoon had
taken it on. He had taken it on in the form of a series of
articles in the Massachusetts Law Quarterly called "Alice in
Nuclear Energyland," and they were ironic and funny but had a lot
of solid material in them. He had done a lot of research, so I
relied on Muldoon's articles and bits of pieces of things I found
in pamphlets about an accident in Canada, and just sort of odds
and ends of things that I could find. There wasn't a whole lot.

52

There was a trade publication called Nucleonics, a McGraw-
Hill magazine. It had a lot of good stuff—it was addressed to
the nuclear engineering field. I went over to the engineering
library, and I just spent a couple of months researching this
thing .

So Kortum sent my article to Bill, his brother Bill, and
Bill gave it to Ernie Joyner, who was the publisher of the
Sebastopol rimes. Joyner was an old Texas populist who had come
further west to own his own little newspaper. He was a
curmudgeonly- -almost a movie character—small town newspaper
publisher barely making ends meet. He had watched what had
happened at Bodega with some concern from his populist point of
view. Not nuclear power, he didn't care about nuclear power one
way or another. He read the manuscript, and he was fascinated
with it; he wanted to publish it in his newspaper. He called me
up, and I'll never forget, he said [in Texas accent], "I want to
run that. I read that thing, I want that like a duck going after
a junebug." [laughter] Well, I didn't want it just published in
some obscure country weekly where it would disappear; I wanted it
to get wider circulation. If these people were that impressed
with it, it must be pretty good. I mean, I thought I was a
pretty good writer.

That became A Visit to the Atomic Park. Well, by this time,
Dave Brower was feeling that he had let me down by not standing
up for me with the Sierra Club board. I had no money to publish
this thing—to get it printed or anything else, but he had some
chits to call in with somebody who ran a printing plant in
Berkeley. I made a deal with Joyner that he would let me
proofread the article and he would print glossy galleys and I
would use those, then, as the camera-ready copy so I didn't have
to pay for it to print this pamphlet. If you look at A Visit to
the Atomic Park, you'll see it is three columns wide per page.
Those were the newspaper columns printed by the typesetter up at
that little plant. And then Kortum was a very good photographer
and had taken a lot of wonderful photographs, so I just spent
evenings down at this fellow's printing shop putting this
pamphlet together. I did a lot of the production on it, too.

Lage: Somebody--! forget if it was the Wellock article or Brewer's oral
history interview— said that Brower wanted it to be a Sierra Club
publication. Do you remember any discussion about that?

Pesonen: I don't recall that Brower wanted it to be a Sierra Club

publication. I don't think it could have been a Sierra Club
publication.

Lage: That surprised me.

53

Pesonen: Dave may have harbored some notion that he would like to, but he
couldn't. So he helped me get it published by having this
printer pay off some debt he owed by printing the pamphlet for
free and not charging me for it.

So I got it printed. I got a thousand copies printed for
nothing. Typesetting by the Sebastopol Times layout by myself,
and production by this guy who was paying off an old debt. It
was just a barter. Then I went out and started peddling. I'd go
to bookstores and I'd say, "You've read about this in the papers;
would you stock a couple of these?"

Lage: Did you get a good response?

Pesonen: Sure. It didn't cost them anything—it was just on commission-
sell it for a dollar, I get twenty- five cents, you keep the rest.
It was not a profitable venture. [laughter] It wasn't done for
profit.

Rallying Public Opinion: The November 10 Forum

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Well, by that time we began to wonder if the PUC was ever going
to issue its decision. Finally, we concluded that the PUC was
waiting for the election, which I think was on the 7th of
November in 1962, and Governor Pat Brown was up for reelection
and this controversy, I suppose they figured—this is total
speculation, I have absolutely no evidence to support this except
for timing—

Except for timing, right.

--that the commission had decided to hold off their decision
until the election was behind them. You know, they're political
appointees like anybody else, and it's not an implausible theory.

I see they issued it on November 9th.
election.

Pretty close to that

Ninth or 10th, yes. Within two or three days after the election
the decision was issued.

Confident that our conspiracy theory was right, that they
were delaying the decision for political reasons, we organized a
public forum in Santa Rosa. I think it was in October--! don't
remember the exact date.

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

I have November 10th.

Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Maybe it was .
been issued.

That's right, it was right after the decision had

It must have been planned--.

It was planned well before. We put out some sensational
publicity about it: oysters glowing in the dark in Willapa Bay up
in Washington; radioactive debris was coming down the Columbia
River from the Hanford plant. Some of it was pretty
unscrupulous. [laughter]

I was going to say unscrupulous. [laughter]

Well, it was sensational.

Sensational, but were these things that had happened?

Well, everything had been said to have happened. [laughter] I
doubt very much any oysters ever glowed in the dark. Not in
Willapa Bay, anyway. And then we publicized Windscale and the
dumping of the milk, to appeal to the dairy farmers. We got a
big turnout. It was in some hall in Santa Rosa.

What kind of people came? Were these just ordinary--.

All kinds of people. Mostly dissidents and radicals, farmers, I
think a whole collection of people from all over the county.

From the inland areas too, not just right there--.

Some from the inland areas. I didn't know most of the people.
We put together this very boring panel discussion. Phil Berry
was the moderator, or maybe I moderated it, but Phil was a
principal speaker, about how hard it was to appear before the AEC
and how unfair it was that the proceedings didn't allow you to
testify, and they didn't consider environmental matters — there
had been no environmental legislation passed by that time, by
Congress or by the state.

We had a doctor from Washington University in St. Louis
whose way we paid out here. He described a program to collect
baby teeth to measure fallout of strontium 901 from all over the
country. There was a rising concern about radioactive

'A radioactive isotope of strontium with a half -life of 28 years,
found in radioactive fallout.

55

contamination from atmospheric tests of weapons. The atmospheric
test ban treaty had not been adopted by then, so we were still
blowing off nuclear weapons out in Nevada in the air or in the
Pacific; so were the Russians, so were the French, and so were
the English. It was a bomb a week it seemed like, with mushroom
clouds sending up debris that was going around the globe on the
jet stream. And there was significant, measurable fallout from
this atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. There was a lot of
press about it.

Lage: So people were aware of nuclear matters?

Pesonen: People were beginning to be aware of radioactivity as an

environmental contaminant which could cause horrible diseases.
And we played on that. I don't deny that we played on that. It
was available to us, and it was not false, and we used it.

Well, the meeting got pretty boring. At the meeting I
handed out stacks of this pamphlet, A Visit to the Atomic Park.
The show was taped by KPFK. Joan Mclntyre went up and taped the
whole thing. I still have the tape of it--I haven't listened to
it for twenty years, but--.

Lage: Who's Joan Mclntyre? The dolphin lady?

Pesonen: Yes, whales and dolphins. She's now married to somebody in Tonga
or someplace in the South Pacific. But Joan was a character, and
she taped the program and then edited it and did a broadcast. At
the end of the meeting, a person whom I had mentioned in the
atomic park, a guy named Alexander Grendon, had been sitting
quietly in the back and demonstrating more and more agitation.
His body language showed that he was in a great state of
unhappiness over what was being said by the panel. He probably
saved the day for us, because his position was Coordinator of
Atomic Energy Development and Radiation Protection, an office
that Pat Brown had created right in the governor's office as a
campaign promise in 1958.

The office had to do with development of nuclear power. Pat
Brown was a great advocate of nuclear power. He had gone to the
dedication of the Humboldt plant in 1958 and made a speech saying
he was going to put California at the forefront of development of
nuclear energy during his campaign in 1958. He made the speech
in San Jose, I think, at the headquarters of General Electric,
which was the manufacturer of these light water reactors. As
part of fulfilling his campaign promise, he had created this
office and appointed Alexander Grendon, who was a retired colonel
of chemical and biological warfare.

56

Grendon couldn't keep his mouth shut. So, he got up to
speak. He didn't come forward--. I remember this just like it
was yesterday. He didn't come forward to the podium and speak to
the audience's face; he stood in the back of the room, and I'm
sure the psychology was wrong, and I knew it was wrong at the
moment, and I decided to use it to fire up this audience. He
talked at the back of people's heads. And he was arrogant. He
said, "You don't know what you're talking about. The AEC
shouldn't have to spend time listening to what you have to say
because you're not experts..." and he confirmed everything we had
said [laughter], and speaking from the governor's office!

Well, that was wonderful, because it enraged our audience.
Lage: You say you used it, but I'm wondering how.
Pesonen: I just let him go on.
Lage: You let him dig his own grave?

Pesonen: Yes. I didn't invite him to come forward. I just said, you

know, "The floor's yours, Colonel Grendon." I made a point of
calling him "Colonel Grendon," too. [laughter] He was
wonderful. So that woke the meeting up. People said, "How can I
help? Where do I sign up?" and they scooped up those pamphlets.

Lage: So the educational presentations that you put forth didn't really
capture their excitement?

Pesonen: That wasn't really so terrific. The people were just dozing off
and threatened to walk out. I thought the meeting was getting
away from us. It was going to end in a whimper, until Grendon
got up and saved it.

Lage: So then were you ready to get these people organized?

Pesonen: We didn't know what we were going to do; you know, we weren't

very well organized. But we clearly had a solid, small amount of
people who were determined to do something about it.

Lage: Had you ever run a campaign before, of any kind?
Pesonen: No. I had no experience.

Lage: You seemed to think you knew what to do, though. I mean, from

the way you talk, you talk as if you had a sense that they needed
the organization, they needed--

57

Pesonen: Well, I'm giving myself too much credit. The idea of the meeting
was Karl Kortum's I think, and a lot of the publicity was Jean
Kortum's and Bill Kortum's. Bill was politically active in
Sonoma County. Doris Sloan was a shrewd organizer. She'd been
with the American Friends Service Committee for a long time, and
the ACLU, I think. They were a little older than I was, and they
knew something about organizing.

We were all very innocent about it in those days. People
are sophisticated these days. Even political campaigns were run
without campaign organizers. You didn't have a campaign manager
in the late fifties and early sixties. There weren't any
computers. Presidents and governors still had whistle stop tours
on trains. You've got to go back and reconstruct where we were
historically at that time. That was thirty years ago. So, I
didn't do all this myself, by any means.

Lage: But you did have a sense it needed organizing, you said.

Pesonen: Yes, and I had a basic talent about handling it when it was put

together. But I'm not terribly creative about those things. The
Kortums had run a successful battle against the State Department
of Highways when it had planned to put the highway 101 freeway
through the Petaluma area. The Department of Highways wanted to
put it through the best agricultural land, and it also would have
come very close to their house. They were successful in a
campaign to get them to move the route of the highway further to
the west and out of the best agricultural land and up on the
hill. So they had a lot of skills from that battle. It was the
first time the Department of Highways had been beaten in one of
their freeway routing controversies.

Lage: That was the beginning of a trend also.

Pesonen: Yes. Well, the Kortums know how to make trouble- -big trouble.
Karl's involved in the palm trees on the Embarcadero right now.
[laughter] Karl's wonderful. I don't know if you've ever talked
to Karl, but--

Lage: I haven't, although he contributed some to the Scott Newhall oral
history, so I've heard his name batted about.

Pesonen: He's a wonderful story teller, and he and Jean both are just a
wonderful team, and they did a lot of this.

58

Saint-Amand and the Earthquake Fault

Pesonen: But anyway, after this meeting, within a couple of days after the
PUC decision, or it was within a day or two of the PUC decision,
and we were cranking up for the AEC hearings. We didn't know
exactly when they were going to be held, but we knew they would
come soon. And Joan Mclntyre had this program broadcast on KPFA
and its affiliate in Los Angeles, KPFK, I think. And, Pierre
Saint-Amand, who was a geologist for the Naval Ordnance Test
Station in China Lake, happened to hear the program on the radio,
and he was outraged.

Lage: So he wasn't somebody whom you found?

Pesonen: No! He found us. This historian who wrote this piece-- J. Samuel
Walker--in the Pacific Historical Review* makes it sound like we
went out and rounded Saint-Amand up, but that's not the case.
Saint-Amand called me up--I don't know how he found me--and said
he heard this program and he thought it was an outrage what was
happening. He was Dr. Saint-Amand, a nationally known
seismologist, and he knew something about the geology up there
and would like to help.

Lage: That must have been nice to hear.

Pesonen: It was wonderful to hear. We didn't have any lawyers, we didn't
have any experts. PG&E had everything. All we had was our
voices. So I made arrangements to go out there with him, and by
this time I had met Julie [Julie Shearer, Pesonen' s former wife
and a colleague of the interviewer], I think. I think I'd met
Julie by this time. She was a reporter for the Mill Valley
Record and covered a little speech I gave over there. I don't
remember whether Julie went with us when we went up there or not,
the first time. Maybe not. Saint-Amand and his assistant, whose
name I don't remember now, drove up in their big van, and we all
went out there, and we spent the day just walking along the ocean
escarpment on the west side of the head [Bodega Head],
Saint-Amand was a character. He had a big beard and a funny
Peruvian hat and--

Lage: Which must have blown off a few times. [laughter]

1 "Reactor at the Fault: The Bodega Bay Nuclear Plant Controversy,
1958-1964--A Case Study in the Politics of Technology," Pacific Historical
Review (1990), pp. 323-348.

59

Pesonen:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:

It had a string on it which ran around his chin. He was a great
story teller. He loved the site and found it technically
intriguing to try to figure out what the geology was out there.

II

And by the time we finished that day's walk, he said, "They've
got a real problem out here." He said he would go to work on
preparing a report, which took quite a long time to put together.
He had to come back and make a couple of trips.

Did he tie it in to the Point Reyes area, or did he--

Not the way the USGS did a year later, but the San Andreas is so
visible on an aerial photo, I mean, you can't miss it. There's
got to be something going on, seismically, out there. You'll
notice that picture in A Visit to the Atomic Park of a locomotive
on its side, knocked over in 1906. Twenty-one feet of
displacement right there at Bolinas, or north of Bolinas. That
was a big earthquake, and it wasn't very far away, and here this
fault runs right through the harbor. So what happened then?

You just got a certain verbal lead from him that there were
problems there, but had no report.

No, I think he wrote a letter. This Walker article cites a
letter that he wrote shortly after that, before his report was
done [April 19, 1963, Saint-Amand to Harold Gilliam, quoted in
Walker article, p. 331). I don't remember that, but I'm sure it
happened.

Walker says he wrote a letter to Stewart Udall's office [U.S.
secretary of interior]. Maybe this was during the time when
Harold Gilliam was working in Udall's office.

I don't remember that,
was.

I just don't remember what that timing

Because Udall seemed to be a key--
Udall was a very key person.
Did you contact him at all?

That was all done by the Kortums or by Gilliam, not by me. I
don't think I ever talked to anyone in the Department of the
Interior, and if I did, it wasn't for very much. I've never
talked to Hal [Gilliam] about that. I'm not privy to his
conversations, but it makes sense he would have spoken with Udall

60

about Bodega. He was part of our organization. We had a plant
right there in the secretary of interior's office [laughter];
that's not bad.

Lage: We'll have to get this straightened out.

Pesonen: It's the kind of thing PG&E used to do; we accused them of it.
[laughter]

Lage: Right. Looks very conspiratorial.
Pesonen: Well, it was. [laughter]

That spring of '63, for me personally, was a slow period,
had to have a job, and I got a job working for Henry Vaux and
John Zivnuska in the UC School of Forestry on a report on the
forest products industry in California. It may have been
Agriculture Extension which was putting it together--! think
Zivnuska was the lead author, and he had asked me to write a
couple of chapters in it, do research and write some chapters.

Lage:

Were they aware of all of this controversy at Bodega?

Pesonen: They were aware. I told them, "Look, I'm involved in this thing
now, and I'm not going to let go of it. I may be spending some
University time with University phones." They were very kind
about it, very understanding. There wasn't any Free Speech
Movement by this time, either. I think they just liked me, and
they respected what I was doing, and they respected the way I did
it. I was up front with them; if I was going to take this job,
there would be times when I was going to be working on Bodega,
and that was just the way it was going to be, or I wasn't going
to work on that job. I'd make up for it. I'd put in hours
elsewhere; I'd somehow keep the books straight, and I think I
did, but I'm sure that I ran the University's phone bill up.
[laughter] The University deserved it. And I had met Julie by
this time and was courting Julie, so my personal life was busy
and this employment was preoccupying, and Bodega was
preoccupying. We didn't know what was going to happen.

PG&E then submitted, to the Atomic Energy Commission, as
part of their application for a construction license, a much more
comprehensive analysis of the site—geologic analysis and
engineering analysis—than they had submitted to the PUC. Well,
we had obtained the submission to the PUC and we had the AEC
submission, and Sam Rogers, who was a biochemistry student who
worked for Joe Neilands , took these two reports and read them and
made a comparison. We found major discrepancies between what

61

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

they had told the PUC about the site, and what they told the AEC.
They were much more honest with the AEC.

They didn't think the AEC would care as much, or do you think
they'd found out more in the meantime?

Well, the AEC had more expertise, so it was harder to pull the
wool over their eyes.

[tape interruption]

Julie had told me something about helping you get a crucial
report. Was that the crucial report that she got in her role as
reporter?

No. That wasn't it.
report.

It was a very crucial report, but another

PG&E had to submit what was called a "preliminary hazard
summary" report, which they filed with the AEC. It's hard to
imagine now, with the Freedom of Information Act and all of the
environmental statutes that have been passed by Congress and
interpreted by the courts, what in fact was the fact then, that
the AEC said we couldn't have a copy of it. We could go in to
their office, and under a guard, sit at a table and read it, but
we couldn't get our own copy. Well, of course, PG&E had a copy,
and we'll come to that in the chronology here.

But before that, Sam Rogers had gone over and read the
exhibits that had been submitted on the seismic question. I
think they were exhibits to this preliminary hazard summary
report or part of the application, anyway. They disclosed facts
about the proximity of the San Andreas fault which had been
denied by PG&E at the PUC hearings and which had not been
revealed in the seismic report submitted at the PUC. We saw
this, two sworn statements that were in conflict, as another
opportunity to try to get the PUC to reconsider their decision.
So we prepared a petition. I wrote it, but Sam Rogers was the
one who found it. I did the writing and the analysis and the
compilation and prepared a long petition. I've forgotten what we
called it, exactly, but it was a petition to reopen for false
evidence, or some hysterical title like that [laughter]. We
submitted it with a press release and filed it with the PUC. The
PUC deliberated on it for a while and finally issued a decision
denying our petition.

But William Bennett, who was a Pat Brown appointee to the
PUC and who had political ambitions of his own--he ran later for
attorney general and I think he really wanted to run for

62

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

governor—issued a dissent and held his own press conference when
he issued the dissent. The dissent seized on both the scenic
issues and the seismic issues and was a very eloquent treatise on
Bodega Bay and why there shouldn't be a plant there. I'm quite
convinced that he saw this as the opening shot at his own
political campaign.

Why are you convinced of that?

Well, I've talked to him since, and he's pretty well conceded
that he saw this as part of his building a campaign. That's the
way people campaigned in those days. There weren't any
television, thirty-second spots.

He could build on the interest in this issue.

Thirty years ago you campaigned through the newspapers , and you
campaigned on issues, and they weren't negative campaigns. We've
forgotten how far political campaigns have descended since then.

In any event, it was another occasion to keep the issue
alive, keep it on the front page of the newspapers, keep the
controversy hot. So we were very grateful.

You did that quite well,
time.

really, over this extended period of

Well, we had to work at it. I mean, you've got to make news,
[laughter] But we found ways to make news. I don't think we
ever made news that didn't have a real factual basis. Something
happened, and all we did was see that it got plenty of attention.
I don't think we ever manufactured anything. I think we ran the
campaign with a lot of integrity.

Relations with PG&E

Lage: Does PG&E agree?

Pesonen: No, they didn't agree at all. [laughter] They were dismayed.

They had never run into anything like this before. This was the
first time that anybody had ever had a sustained campaign that
didn't quit. About this time, they tried to talk me out of
pursuing this.

Lage: Tell me about that.

63

Pesonen: That was Hal Strube, who was in the PG&E public affairs

department. He was the person assigned the responsibility to
handle all the public relations and see that it ran smoothly. We
were driving Strube nuts, and Strube made the mistake of
cultivating Julie. Here was a reporter. He went around and
talked to all of the newspapers, talked to the reporters; that
was the way he did his job. He didn't know that Julie and I were
romantically involved. So he thought that he had an ally in
Julie, and Julie was a good spy. She said, "Well, I'd like to
read that preliminary hazard summary report." So he lent it to
her, and she called me up, and we ran over to the Sierra Club and
turned on the Xerox machine and photocopied the whole thing,
[laughter] That's the report that Julie was talking about. Then
she gave it back to Strube and said it was very interesting.
Then Strube learned a month or two later that we were getting
married. [laughter]

Lage: He must have been dismayed.

Pesonen: Poor Strube. [laughter] He knew he'd been had.

Strube then invited me to go out to the little reactor that
they had out in Pleasanton. It was an experimental reactor that
PG&E ran in conjunction with General Electric. It was a test
reactor. They had hooked up a small generator that they had
retrieved from an old ship and declared that this was producing
electricity. Well, it never made any money, and it didn't
produce much electricity, but it was a public relations coup:
PG&E was now generating electricity from nuclear power in two
places, Humboldt Bay and Pleasanton.

Lage: Was Humboldt Bay a legitimate nuclear plant?

Pesonen: Humboldt Bay opened in 1962, I think.

Lage: Was it as big as what they planned for Bodega?

Pesonen: Oh no. Humboldt Bay was sixty megawatts, and Bodega was planned
to be three hundred megawatts. That's small by today's
standards. They build them two thousand megawatts now; Diablo
Canyon is two thousand megawatts. But Bodega was the biggest
then, and Humboldt was as big as the only one or two other
reactors that were operating in the West.

Lage: So this was very experimental.

Pesonen: Very experimental. Well, the theory wasn't experimental, but
each design was a unique design, designed for its site.

Lage:

I interrupted you. Strube took you out to Pleasanton.

Pesonen: Strube invited me to go out to Pleasanton and see the reactor.

He thought maybe this would assuage my concerns. I agreed to go,
and I asked Frances Herring to go with me. I think Frances is
probably dead now; I haven't heard from her for years. She was a
wonderful woman, and she was a friend of Barney Dreyfus, who had
handled one of these little lawsuits we brought against the
county—unsuccessful lawsuits — and she worked at the Institute
for Governmental Studies on campus. She was an older woman, a
good writer and a really fine person, and she was very interested
in the Bodega case, interested in it as a social event, I think.
She went with me, and we went with Strube.

It was a rainy day, I remember. This must have been in the
early spring or late winter in '63, and I was living in a rooming
house over here on Durant. The guy who ran the rooming house was
a little technical wizard; he liked to play with electronics. He
had made a little radiation detector that would fit in the inside
of your coat pocket, and it made a little "beep" on exposure to
radiation, and I took it along and stuck it in my pocket. We
walked into this room out at Pleasanton where they were
manipulating plutonium in one of these big boxes with the rubber
gloves, and that detector just went crazy. It was tripping away
in my pocket and I couldn't shut it up, and I was afraid Strube
would hear it. [laughter]

Lage: He must have. [laughter]

Pesonen: There was a lot of debris around that place. It was dirty. So I
was unimpressed. Nobody was being fried alive in this place or
anything-- [laughter]

Lage: I wonder what he thought would impress you so much about it?

Pesonen: I don't know what he had in mind except that maybe seeing the
awesome technology, and the care with which you had to walk
through a radiation detector when you went into the room and when
you came out, had to wipe your shoes and wear a smock, and stuff
like that.

So we dropped Frances off, and we pulled into the parking
lot of the place where I was living, and Strube wanted to talk.
It was driving rain outside, and he shut the engine off, and the
windows got all fogged up. He started to tell me that he was
very concerned about what was going to happen to my life ; that it
would be very hard for me to find a job after this prominent role
I had taken; that my politics was being questioned; that there
was no future in what I was doing; and had I thought about that?

65

Lage:

Here was this slimy, PR type giving me a fatherly lecture about
What's going to happen to my life? I was infuriated, and I was
depressed. And I got the sense that he was on the edge of
offering me a bribe. He never did, and I can't accuse him of
that, but I had this overwhelming nausea, almost, that I was
being offered something if I would stop doing what I was doing.
I thanked him and got out of the car and never talked to him
about it again, but I'll never forget it.

But you did remain cool.

Pesonen: Oh yes. I didn't say "I'm — ." No, I didn't blow up for him or
anything. I thanked him for the trip, said it was very
interesting. But inside, I was--. I wasn't seething; I don't
get angry that way, I was just very, very depressed that
something like that would happen. It was sort of like being in
the presence of evil, you know. [laughter] I don't like to
think evil exists, and when I rub shoulders with it, it always
depresses me because I'm a fairly happy person and an optimistic
one. That stayed with me for a long time.

Lage: Did it feel like a threat as much as a bribe?
you. "

Like, "We can ruin

Pesonen: Well, it felt like both. It felt like both. And I was worried.
I thought, "What am I going to do with my life?" I didn't have a
career that was saleable, I was a forester and I wasn't working
in forestry, I had taken on a huge corporation which had enormous
influence. There were moments when I got worried. I would talk
to Karl Kortum and say, "You know, maybe I'd better get out of
this. What's going to happen to me?" I didn't have any support
system. I didn't have any money. But I didn't quit, anyway. I
put that out of my mind after a while.

Role of Udall's Department of Interior

Pesonen: By this time Udall was involved, the USGS was starting to issue
preliminary reports of one kind or another. I'm fuzzy on the
sequence, the details of those. They seemed to be very well laid
out in this Pacific Historical Review article by J. Samuel
Walker. There's a lot in that article that I had forgotten or
didn't have in a linear way in my own mind.

Lage: Well, it's been a while since it happened, after all.

66

Pesonen: Well, I wasn't privy to all of what happened there. I wasn't
supposed to talk to [Julius] Schlocker and [Manuel G.] Bonilla
who were the two geologists from Menlo Park with the USGS. I
felt it was not ethical for me to discuss with them what they
were finding because I didn't want to appear to be influencing
their assessment of the site.

By this time, PG&E had started construction. Preliminary
construction could be commenced without a construction license
and without any environmental review; there was no requirement of
environmental review then. What I learned from Walker's article
is that there were informal efforts between the AEC and the
Department of the Interior to do what the National Environmental
Policy Act now requires them to do.

Lage: I thought that was a very key thing when I read that--
Pesonen: That was very interesting.
Lage: --that Udall--

Pesonen: Yes. They proposed a joint memorandum for evaluation of nuclear
power plants generally.

Lage: Right. To be sure they would comply with conservation efforts of
the Department of the Interior.

Pesonen: And the AEC said they didn't have jurisdiction to look at
environmental consequences of what they did there. It's a
mandate now, under federal law. The Calvert Cliffs decision by
the District of Columbia circuit made that very clear. It was
one of the early, fine decisions under NEPA. But at that time,
NEPA didn't exist and so Udall was approaching this, and using
Bodega as a case history, as a centerpiece, to do what Congress
finally mandated all federal agencies do. He was ahead of his
time, and Bodega was the precipitator of it. I don't think
there's any question about that.

Keeping Bodega in the News; Memorial Day Concert and Balloons

Pesonen: Well, we had to keep cranking the publicity up, so that's what
gave rise to the Memorial Day '63 balloon episode.

Lage: Tell me about that.

67

Pesonen: That was--. Whose idea was that? That was not my idea,
was Pat Watters--that was Lu Watters's wife's idea.

That

Lage: I haven't heard her name mentioned in all these things,
about Lu Watters, but I don't hear about his wife.

You hear

Pesonen: Well, Lu's dead now, too, and they divorced a few years later,
but they were living in Cotati, and they were very involved.
Somebody had talked Lu into trying to play his horn again and--.
Karl Kortum really thought this one up, Karl and Pat, and they
put it all together. I just went and gave a speech. Karl had
been a college student when Lu was at the height of his powers
with the Down Club in Annie Place in San Francisco. Lu was the
father of the revival of Dixieland jazz in San Francisco in the
early forties, then after the war. So there were tens of
thousands of people who knew who Lu Watters was and who didn't
know anything about nuclear power or Bodega, or cared very much.

So we put that whole thing together, and it was a wonderful
day. It turned out to be a beautiful windy day- -the wind was
blowing exactly the right direction. [laughter]

Lage: For what purpose?

Pesonen: To blow the balloons into places where people would pick up the
cards and call the local newspapers. I was told, and it may be
apocryphal, one of the balloons flew right into a hotel room in
San Francisco, one of the balloons landed in the fountain at the
Civic Center in Marin County—they came down all over the place.

Lage: Now, that wasn't your idea either, or was it?
balloon release?

Whose idea was the

Pesonen: No. I thought it was a wonderful idea, but I didn't come up with
the idea. Pat Watters came up with the idea of the balloons, I
think.

Lage: Because that was used a lot later.

Pesonen: It's been used a lot by people since then. So we brought Turk
Murphy's band out there. Lu talked Turk Murphy into coming out
with his band, Bob Helm, Wally what was his name—most of those
guys are dead now. By this time Don Sherwood had picked the
thing up and was talking about it on his morning talk show [on
KSFO] .

Lage: Now, he was quite influential on public opinion.

68

Pesonen: He was very influential. He was funny, and he was irreverent.
There was another group called the Goodtime Washboard Three out
here in Berkeley that put out a record called "Don't Blame PG&E,
Pal, It Must Be San Andreas 's Fault." [laughter]

Lage: That's a good one. And we didn't mention, I don't think, that Lu
Watters recorded "Blues Over Bodega," or was that later?

Pesonen: That was later. Lu hadn't recorded anything by this time. So
there was a lot of attention. Sherwood was talking about it on
his morning talk show, and then we had this big Memorial Day
thing. Lots and lots of people came. We all drove out on the
head, and PG&E had a public relations guy in a trailer out there
and he just fled. We got all the balloons out, the band got
their instruments out, and they started to play good old
Dixieland, and we started letting these balloons go. They just
soared off into the beautiful blue sky, sailed out over Sonoma
and Marin counties and disappeared from sight. Each one with a
card tied to it saying, "This balloon represents a radioactive
molecule of Strontium 90 or Iodine 131"--molecule is technically
incorrect, but it didn't matter--"If you find this balloon, call
your local newspaper. It was released on Bodega Bay on Memorial
Day, 1963." And they did come down in all different places.

The thing just caught people's imagination, and they had a
point to make, which was that they were going to build a nuclear
power plant on an earthquake fault, or next to one- -certainly in
a seismically dangerous place- -upwind from where millions of
people lived. That was our strategy—that really epitomized our
strategy. We knew we couldn't win if the people in Sonoma County
were the only ones who got concerned. We had to get the
metropolitan San Francisco area up in arms. People had to feel
personally threatened here.

Lage: And, up until then, had they not been?

Pesonen: Up until then it was some remote controversy way off up the coast
someplace, it didn't affect them. This helped to bring it home.

Lage: Did that event get a lot of coverage?

Pesonen: It got a lot of coverage, and colorful coverage, and attention-
gathering coverage.

II

Pesonen: So, our political theory was to make the Bay Area feel that this
was part of the Bay Area's concern. By this time, Save San
Francisco Bay Association had been started, so there was a

69

reviving environmental consciousness in San Francisco. We wanted
to play into that. We found an atmospheric physicist at the
University of Arizona, James McDonald, who was very well
respected in his field. He came out and we got all of the
meteorological reports and we dug out historic weather records
and all kinds of stuff, and he put together a report.

The idea really was triggered by Karl Kortum, who remembered
a forest fire up there back in the early fifties or late forties
in which the smoke had gone down the coast and come in the Golden
Gate. So we had a theory that, if there were a major accident
and a release of radioactivity, it would come into San Francisco
Bay, the prevailing winds being from the northwest. This
atmospheric physicist was able to establish a high likelihood of
that based on his analysis of all the weather records.

Lage: It would come down the coast instead of more inland?

Pesonen: Right. It was going to come down along the face of the coast and
then blow in the Gate. It certainly would come into the San
Francisco Bay Area. He had wonderful diagrams with maps and all
kinds of stuff, and we put out a nice, impressive-looking report.
We released that, and that got people's attention.

Lage: Now, was he someone you had to hire?

Pesonen: No. I think we paid his expenses, but he read A Visit to the

Atomic Park, and we talked, and he felt the way we did: that this
was wrong. There is no such thing, in my opinion, as a totally
disinterested expert. That is a fiction.

Lage: On either side?

Pesonen: On any side, that is a fiction. There are certain professional
standards, and an expert will only go so far, but they will make
as favorable a report as they can within professional standards,
most of them, on behalf of who paid them or what they believe in.

McDonald wrote his report because he believed we were
correct, and I think that it's not a dishonest report. But there
are a lot of uncertainties too. It depends on what time of day,
what direction the wind is blowing. He just said it's possible,
and it's not a low probability.

70

Growing Doubts about Site Safety and PG&E Pullout, October 1964

Pesonen: So we had this compilation of pretty good stuff. I think by this
time we had Saint-Amand's report--! don't remember exactly when
we got that- -but we had McDonald's report, we had Saint-Amand's
report, we had several reports that even PG&E's people, some of
them, were uneasy about. Don Tocher, I think, was very uneasy
about the project.

Lage: Was he with PG&E?

Pesonen: He was one of their consultants. There were a lot of people

involved at this point that I wasn't personally acquainted with.

So it was building. You could tell PG&E was nervous. They
did something that they had never done before, that I know of;
they attacked us in the press. When they first did that, they
put out a fact sheet: "Statements by the Northern California
Association to Preserve Bodega Head and Harbor: The Truth." It
had a question and answer format like that: falsity, truth;
falsity, truth. Some of our supporters called; I know the
Ruebels called, and they were very worried, "PG&E's come out and
they've attacked us now. We're in real trouble," and I said,
"It's the best thing that ever happened to us. I hope they do it
more." Because all it did was give credibility to us. A little
disorganized band of citizens, and the largest utility in the
world is putting out lengthy statements refuting what they say.
There's enough smoke there; there must be some fire in what we're
talking about.

Lage:

Was PG&E taking out ads, or putting out press releases?

Pesonen: Press releases. I don't recall any ads. You know, newspaper

reporters are pretty cynical, and I think it changed the way the
press perceived us. If we were worthy enough to get an attack
from PG&E, then we were worthy enough for them to listen to us.
When they got a press release from us, they paid attention to it;
it wasn't just somebody blowing their horn out there. So we were
able to get a lot of press, and we had a high level of
credibility because PG&E attacked us. All of these things fed on
each other. Everything is connected to everything else in
something like this.

Lage:

I get a little fuzzy on how things unfolded then. It seems
like the fall of '63 was pretty quiet.

The report from Saint-Amand was the end of August '63.

71

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Was it? Okay, yes. That sounds about right. I remember when we
got the report, I went to see the president of PG&E and I said,
"We've got this report, you are in an embarrassing situation, you
are going to lose this fight eventually. We'll be glad not to

release the report if you'll just pull out."
believe how naive I was.

[laughter] I can't

How did you relate with him? Had you ever met him?

I'd never met him before. I didn't have any trouble getting an
appointment with him.

Was this Sutherland still?

I think it was Sutherland. He had a staff surrounding him, and

they all sat there and listened solemnly,
believe I did that! Anyway, I did.

How did he react?

[laughter] I can't

"Thank you very much, but we believe we are on the right track."
Something like that. I didn't keep a diary then, and I wish I
had, but it's funny when I look back on it. I didn't believe
then, really, that they would pull out, but it would have been in
their self-interest, but people don't act in their self-interest
in big institutions.

But I seem to recall that things were pretty quiet then.
Julie and I got married in August of '63, and so I think we were
setting up a household, and she was working, and I was probably
starting to think about writing a book on this. I was getting
worried because we'd kind of run out of things to keep this story
alive in the newspapers, and there were no AEC hearings
scheduled.

You weren't spending every minute on this, it sounds like.

Pretty much. I don't think I had a job. I wasn't employed. But
we just exhausted our--. By this time we had what we called an
organization. We were raising some money, and I had a newsletter
I was putting out and issuing press releases now and then. But
it seemed quiet, and 1 was a little worried about that. And
then, along came the Good Friday earthquake [in southern Alaska]
in 1964.

Well, the USGS people were out at Bodega schlocking around,
following the construction, and there would be a little story
here and a little story there.

72

Lage: On September 25, '63, the USGS preliminary report came out that
was strongly negative toward PG&E.

Pesonen: Preliminary report, but you get one day's press on that, and then
what are you going to say?

Well, I think I was busy keeping track of all of these
various reports and studies that were going on and putting out a
newsletter to our members, and raising money from them, all of
which we did by hand, you know.

Lage: Most of the money you raised was from small donors?

Pesonen: We had a few large donors. It wasn't a lot. I don't think we
spent more than $20,000 on the whole campaign.

Lage: Were your donors Sonoma locals?

Pesonen: One was George Wheelwright who lived in Mar in County, on the
ranch that is now the Zen Center, the Wheelwright Ranch.
Wheelwright was very interested in what we were doing. He was a
friend of Peter Behr's [Marin County supervisor and later state
senator] .

We had some public hearings. We had a public hearing before
the Marin County Board of Supervisors, which Peter Behr chaired.
We put together a meeting before a committee on the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors, chaired by Leo McCarthy at that time.

Lage: Did you get them to pass resolutions?

Pesonen: Yes, or recommend resolutions, but mainly we used them as forums
for more public attention, and they worked pretty well for that.
They were just ways of keeping the thing alive until--. We fully
expected we would be going to an AEC hearing.

Lage: Was there a lawsuit somewhere along the way?

Pesonen: There were a couple: against the Board of Supervisors for the way
they had granted the local permits, but those were dumped.
Barney Dreyfus brought those and did a nice job on them, but he
knew that they were what the courts would have called frivolous,
I think, today. They sanction lawyers for frivolous lawsuits
today; they didn't then.

Lage:

There probably weren't so many of them then.

73

Pesonen: There weren't so many of them then. There wasn't a need to
sanction lawyers for them. And, in the larger sense, they
weren't frivolous.

I don't recall what happened with any great detail, month-
by-month until the Good Friday earthquake.

Lage: That was March 27, 1964.

Pesonen: Yes, that is right. That is when it was. And that was a big

deal, because it was a horrendous earthquake. Life magazine had
a cover showing whole hillsides of houses sliding into the ocean
in Anchorage, and there was a tsunami created by that earthquake
which hit Crescent City. It came into San Francisco Bay, too,
and damaged some boats, and the wave killed some people in
Crescent City. Here was an earthquake 3,000 miles away that
killed people in California. It gave credence to what we were
talking about: the power of these big seismic events.

Lage: Did that get immediately connected to Bodega?

Pesonen: No, I made the connection. We issued a press release, "This

demonstrates what we've been talking about." People were scared.
People forget, but they were scared for a while.

I was getting worried and optimistic at the same time. Our
membership was losing interest. Nothing was happening. All we
were hearing was press releases and press coverage. By this
time, of course, Udall was involved, the USGS was involved, so
this was big time! It wasn't just a little band of dissidents
out here.

Lage: When you say your membership, who are you —

Pesonen: Oh, the people who got this newsletter. They didn't send money
in as much, and I could just feel that our support was dwindling
just out of boredom by the length of this campaign. It had gone
on for two years, by this time, unresolved. But I was encouraged
by what the USGS was doing and what Udall was doing and the
uneasiness we detected among PG&E's experts. They didn't sound
real confident. They'd come out and say that it was okay, but
they didn't ring with confidence. Finally the AEC said they were
going to have preliminary reports from their regulatory staff and
from the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, and we
anticipated those. When those came down, that was all she wrote.
They came down in October [1964]. I think by this time I was
getting ready to go to law school.

Lage:

So you were making plans for your future by this time?

Pesonen: I was making plans for my future.

What happened is pretty much what Walker says happened: the
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards concluded that the site
was adequate, with sufficient engineering safeguards, and the AEC
staff went through a philosophical analysis of what "unacceptable
risk" means and said that they didn't exactly know what it meant,
but they knew that this one was over the line. That gave PG&E
the out that they needed to say that, "We've always maintained it
would be safe, and this distinguished panel of experts, the
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety agrees with us, but the
staff has some questions, and we've always maintained if there
was the slightest doubt about public safety we wouldn't go ahead
with the facility." That was the gist of their statement and it
didn't fool many people, but it made them feel better,
[laughter]

Lage: It made them feel that they had gotten out graciously. Do you
think that all of the public attention was the key thing in
raising the AEC staff--

Pesonen: Oh, absolutely. You wouldn't have gotten Udall interested; we
had the Lieutenant Governor Glenn Anderson writing letters.

Stance of Governor Pat Brown and Democratic Party Officials

Lage: Now, how did you get the state people involved?

Pesonen: Well, when there is enough public attention on this thing, you
know, politicians come to you because they want to ride on your
coattails, and we want to ride on theirs. It's a symbiotic
relationship. We need the emphasis that they give, the
credibility and prestige they bring to our campaign, and they
want to be identified as something they see as politically useful
to them.

Lage: What about Pat Brown with all of his enthusiasm for nuclear
power? At some point he comes out saying, according to the
Walker article, "I don't like to see Bodega Head with a steam
plant located out there in that beautiful place."

Pesonen: But that is not all of what Pat Brown said. If I recall

correctly--! don't want to dispute this writing without looking
up the original document, but my recollection is that he
regretted that beautiful site was being used for nuclear power;
he was sorry about it, but nuclear power was important and the

75

plant should go ahead. I don't recall that Brown ever came out
against the plant.

Lage: It was after the AEC had issued its report in October, I see,
that he held a press conference saying nuclear danger is too
great to take a chance.

Pesonen: That was PG&E's position.

Lage: Right. It was just before PG&E withdrew.

Pesonen: They probably put him up to it [laughter]. It paved the way for
their statement. I wouldn't be a bit surprised at that.

Lage: Did the issue get involved in Democratic Party politics? Somehow
Jean Kortum is mentioned with the CDC [California Democratic
Council] and--

Pesonen: Well, one of the first talks I gave to get support was to the

Democratic Central Committee. Roger Kent was chair at that time,
and they had a meeting in Rohnert Park. I don't remember when
that was. I think it was late '62 or early '63. I carefully
wrote what I think was a very good speech about what was
happening, and they allowed me to get on the program. I used it
as a forum. I gave a lot of speeches, most of which I don't
remember where they were, but I talked to a lot of groups. I
talked to the Garden Club in Mill Valley, the Rotary Club in
Sonoma. I was all over the place.

Lage: Just like PG&E.

Pesonen: Just like PG&E. [laughter]

Lage: Did you get a good reception?

Pesonen: I almost got lynched by the Rotary Club in Sonoma. They all got
drunk.

Lage: This was a lunch meeting.

Pesonen: No, it was a dinner meeting. It was the Kiwanis or the Rotary,
and a local banker was the moderator, and I think they had a
debate. It might have been Strube and me. These guys had too
much to drink, and they really started coming after me.

Lage: Verbally?

Pesonen: A couple of them got up and wanted to take their jackets off.

76

Lage: Had you made statements that would provoke people?

Pesonen: No. I just told my story, but they believed in PG&E, the nice
guys from PG&E were part of the Kiwanis or the Rotaries.

Lage: That's right, they were their fellow- -

Pesonen: They were their fellow people, and I was attacking their

integrity, I guess. And it meant tax revenue for a depressed
agricultural economy. Lots of tax revenue. So I was a threat to
their bourgeois values. This banker stepped in and calmed things
down. He said, "Look, we invited this young man to come and talk
to us. He is our guest. We have an obligation as gentlemen to,"
there are no women in Kiwanis, so he could say, "we have an
obligation as gentlemen to treat him with courtesy." That
chained them, and they all settled down and went home.

Lage: Now how was your reception at the Democratic Central Committee?

Pesonen: Very good. Roger Kent was very helpful. He was helpful

throughout the matter, behind the scenes. He may have had
something to do with Udall being involved, too. Roger was a
wonderful man.

Lage: Do you remember other things that he might have done?

Pesonen: I think he opened doors for me. He was a person who peddled

influence. He had a lot of influence; he was widely respected,
and he had been active in Democratic politics for a long time,
and he was from a prominent Marin County family that was very
wealthy. I think he even gave me a little money. It was more
Roger than the central committee. I don't remember who else was
on the central committee.

Lage: And did Jean Kortum work in political circles?

Pesonen: Yes, Jean was very active in San Francisco politics and

Democratic politics. I don't recall if she was ever on the
central committee. She was very close to Jack Morrison, who was
mayor [of San Francisco] or became mayor right around that time.
She worked on Morrison's campaign. She was part of what would
now be called the old-line San Francisco liberal establishment.
Jean's very smart. Jean did a lot of the hard work on this. She
set up an appointment for us to go and talk to Jerry [Jerome]
Waldie who was speaker of the assembly at that time, out in
Antioch. She had a lot of contacts and was creative and worked
hard and she had good public relations sense. She's the one who
put together that collection of clippings that we distributed to

77

show how much attention was given to this, which was a political
device.

Lage: To interest the people in politics?

Pesonen: For people in politics.

That's the story.

Lage: What have we not covered? We've gotten PG&E out.

Pesonen: There are hundreds, thousands of anecdotes.

Lage: I'd like some of the anecdotes.

Pesonen: Well, you know, I don't remember any.

Lage: If you remember them.

Pesonen: It's hard for me to dredge them up on my own. They have to be

precipitated by a bottle of wine and story telling and then they
come. I think that I am the kind of person who--. One of my
strengths is to see the big picture, but I lose the details.

Lage: Well, it has been thirty years.

Pesonen: Yes, and I remember this one better than a lot of things I've
been involved in, because it was a big part of my life. It
really shaped my life in a lot of ways.

Lage: Well, if they come back to you at some point, throw them in.
The Technical and Human Problems with Nuclear Power

Lage: One thing you didn't tell here, which you told me the first time
we met, was how you delved into some of the technical matters and
what your background for that was.

Pesonen: Yes. I felt it necessary, when I said something about nuclear

power, that I knew what I was talking about. So I spent a lot of
time reading a lot of technical material. I had had the brief
hope to be a nuclear engineer when I first got out of high
school. I was kind of dazzled by nuclear power, too, but it
became clear to me that I did not have the mathematical
proficiency. I wasn't going to be a brilliant nuclear physicist,

78

but I found the subject fascinating and I had read about it long
before Bodega.

How did it work? I've always been interested in how things
work. When I was a little boy, I used to take clocks apart and
try to put them back together, and I always fixed my own fishing
reels, and I was always taking things apart and putting them back
together. I've just always been interested in how things work.
I was very interested in how nuclear power worked. It was a
fascinating topic and very interesting physics. It was the big
breakthrough in science.

Lage: So you were part of the same group that was affected by this
feeling that atomic power might be the saving grace?

Pesonen: Yes. At first I did believe that. I wasn't against it. So I
got interested in how a nuclear power plant works and how you
keep it safe and what does it do?

Lage: Did you get a more jaded view of nuclear power aside from the
site at Bodega, with the faults and all that?

Pesonen: No, I didn't get a jaded view about nuclear power. I never
thought it wouldn't work. I thought there were some real
problems. The waste disposal problem was very serious, and
whatever was necessary to protect against a major meltdown and a
release of this intensely radioactive material—fission
products—into the environment. I became convinced that it
wasn't safe, not because of the physics of it, but because of the
kind of people I ran into who were in charge of it. [laughter]
The same kind of people who ran the plant at Chernobyl, you know?
They believed so strongly in what they were doing that they would
cut corners.

Lage: Now, where did you see that happening?
Pesonen: Well, Bodega was the best example.
Lage: The way they handled the reports?

Pesonen: They would sort of deny what was plain on its face to me. I
didn't trust them. It wasn't any emotional antipathy toward
nuclear power as a physical means of making energy.

Lage: There's a lot of, and I suppose it's in the Wellock article but
other places too, talk about the anti-technology theme as if
there was just sort of a dislike of technology.

79

Pesonen: Well, I didn't share that. I'm sure a lot of people who

supported what we were doing were part of that anti-technology--
the Luddites of the world. And I'm not a Luddite.

Lage: Later, did you come to oppose nuclear power in a broader sense?

Pesonen: Mainly because of the waste disposal problem. I don't know the
answer to that. I don't know that anybody does. And also
because I think the design of the generation of plants that we
are involved with is inherently unsafe. I gave a speech, in
fact, in 1974 to the American Nuclear Society where I said that.
I said, "You could make a safe nuclear power plant, but you're in
too big a hurry to make a profit from a design which was invented
by Alvin Weinberg to run submarines with about five megawatts of
power, and that's pretty safe because it's small. There's not
enough heat there to melt the whole works down. But you move up
to 2,000 megawatts, and you've got too much residual heat there
and you can't get rid of it if something goes wrong."

But there are entirely different designs — some that use
thorium, some that use graphite for a moderator. The Canadians
have a reactor that's almost impossible to melt down. They're
called CANDU reactors. But there are other designs that have
inherent feedback safety mechanisms: as they start to run away,
they shut themselves down.

**

Pesonen: I still feel, on one level, that nuclear power could be made

safe. It may have to be at some point. I'd like to see it made
safe, but the industry used the 1954 Atomic Energy Act as a way
of appropriating a technology which had been developed for a
different purpose—scaling it up, but without changing its
fundamental design: a water-moderated, enriched uranium reactor
that is controlled by boron rods that are mechanically operated
is inherently unsafe. So you have to have emergency core cooling
systems and huge containment structures and all kinds of other
safety devices that are extraneous to the operation of the
reactor; which are only designed for safety, to work in
emergencies and not to work at all until there is an emergency.
And, like the fire extinguishers in most houses, they don't work
anymore- -or the smoke detectors- -and even when they are needed,
they don't work very well. It's not a particularly good analogy,
but it will do for the moment. I know enough about reactors from
what I read back then that I am sure there are inherently safe
designs. But the industry was in too big a hurry to get out
front, competitively. The profit motive drove them, not so much
to cut corners, but to avoid the heavy capital investment and the
research and development investment into safer design theories.

80

Lage: It seems very much kind of the engineering, seat-of-the-pants
approach. They found a system at fault, so they devised a--

Pesonen: Yes, there was some of that at Bodega, but we're talking about
nuclear power, generally. And I've always felt that. On some
other level, I think that there is a societal problem that we are
going to run out of resources sooner or later—not just energy,
we are going to run out of a lot of things, and a substitute
source of energy for fossil fuels will just delay the day when we
are going to have to reckon with the size of our population and
demand on the planet. But that's a different issue.

Lage: You probably hadn't worked all of that out at Bodega.

Pesonen: But that's not a technical question. In a nutshell, that's how I
feel about it, and always have.

Lage: You haven't changed over time?

Pesonen: No. I haven't changed over time about that.

Lage: Did you have any feed- in to the Sierra Club as they were working
out their position on nuclear power after Bodega?

Pesonen: Some, but not too directly. That really happened around the

Diablo Canyon fight, and I was in law school when a lot of that
happened and I didn't have time to get involved in it.

Lage: And it happened later, too.
Pesonen: It happened later.

Lage: Did you know Fred Eissler, who seemed to sort of carry the flag
in Diablo?

Pesonen: Yes. Well, Fred was involved with Bodega, too.
Lage: Oh, he was? How was he involved in that?

Pesonen: To some extent. He was one the board--! think he was one of the
dissidents on the board who wanted the club to support us, and he
was in a minority. He was down in Santa Barbara. He wasn't
close enough--.

I was not that involved with the Sierra Club. You know I
worked, for a short time, for Ed Wayburn [Sierra Club president
during the 1960s. ]

81

Lage: Now when did you do that? I saw a notice in the minutes that
they had gotten some money to hire you as an assistant to--

Pesonen: Assistant to Wayburn, who was president then.

Lage: And that was in '63.

Pesonen: That was in '63.

Lage: Did you go back and work for them then?

Pesonen: I did for a while. Not for very long, because I was still
working on Bodega then.

Lage: I was kind of surprised, given the split about Bodega, that they
would hire you right at that time.

Pesonen: Well, they thought I was pretty effective, I guess. I did a lot
of other things for the club, besides nuclear power, and I could
write, and I could speak well, and Wayburn needed help. He was a
physician; he had a practice. But it became very clear that it
was an embarrassment to him for me to be his executive assistant
and do what he needed and comply with club policy on nuclear
power and then put on my other hat and go speak out on Bodega.
It just got too confusing, and it just wouldn't work. He didn't
have that much for me to do. [laughter] I suppose you could
spin out a conspiracy theory that this was a way to try to keep
me quiet. If somebody had that notion, it didn't work,
[laughter] I don't think Ed was party to any such idea. And I'm
not suggesting that was a fact.

Lage: From the minutes I read [looks at notes] it sounds like they had
gotten a specific donation. Maybe just to hire somebody for Ed,
but I wondered if they had gotten a specific donation to hire
you? [Sierra Club Board of Directors Executive Committee
minutes, October 5, 1963.)

Pesonen: I would be interested to know where the donation came from.
Lage: I would too. That's not in the minutes.
Pesonen: I don't remember that.

Lage: There are still some ends I think we need to tie up, or some
reflections, but we can begin with that next time.

The Hole in the Head, nuclear reactor under
construction at Campbell Cove, Bodega Bay.

Photo by Karl Kortum

Harold Gilliam and David Pesonen at Sierra Club Offices, 1962.

photo by Karl Kortum

Karl Kortum, Joe Neilands, and David, after the PUC hearings, March 1962.

Kortum photo

^P*feMpf jJfe

Bob Helm, clarinet; Bob Neighbor and Lu Watters, trumpets; Turk Murphy,
trombone- -Memorial Day 1963 concert and balloon release at Bodega.

Photos by Karl Kortum

David Pesonen, Joel Hedgpeth, Lu Watters, at a Bodega event.
"Regarding Dave Pesonen, it was a disastrous break for PG&E
when this talented and determined Finn appeared on the
Bodega scene blessed with the energy of a dozen pack mules!"
(Lu Watters, 1964).

photo by Karl Kortum

Finding the Fault- -USGS team in the reactor hole.

Photo by Karl Kortum

David Pesonen with Rose Gaffney, a rancher on Bodega Head whose land was condemned

by PG&E. "Before the man even sat down in my house, he told me that PG&E's powers

of condemnation were greater than those of the State of California" (Rose Gaffney,
ca. 1964).

photo by Karl Kortum

Jean Kortum and David on a lobbying trip to
Sacramento.

Photo by Julie Shearer

Protestor at a
demonstration at
PG&E's San Francisco
headquarters, 1963.

Joe Beeman,
Willie Brown,
John Burton with
protest placards, 1963

Photos by Karl Kortum

"Saved: Bodega Head"

Hazel Bonneke [Mitchell] and David after the

victory.

Photo by Julie Shearer

82

IV MORE REFLECTIONS ON THE BODEGA CAMPAIGN AND ITS AFTERMATH
[Interview 3: February 12, 1992] ii

Pioneers of Sixties-Style Activism or Pragmatic Campaigners?

Pesonen: I am probably finding out more about the Bodega campaign from
this interview than you are, because these articles are coming
out now that have done a lot of research that I never did,
uncovering things I didn't know about. I didn't know there was
an FBI investigation or a J. Edgar Hoover dossier on us until I
read the Wellock piece.

Lage: Oh really?

Pesonen: No, I had no idea about that. There were people who suspected
that there was some kind of FBI investigation of the
"subversives" running this thing, and I just brushed it off. It
wasn't worth the psychic energy to go play with that idea when I
had other things to do; it was just not my temperament. But it
is an interesting fact. It was all speculative until I saw the
authority in that paper form. There are lots of little odds and
ends and tidbits from the two articles: the one in the Pacific
Historical Review1 and the Wellock piece2. They both did a
pretty fair job.

1 J. Samuel Walker, "Reactor at the Fault: The Bodega Bay Nuclear
Plant Controversy, 1958-1964--A Case Study in the Politics of Technology,"
Pacific Historical Review, 1990, pp. 323-348.

2Thomas Wellock, "The Battle for Bodega Bay: The Sierra Club and
Nuclear Power, 1958-1964," later published in California History, Vol.
LXXI, No. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 192-211.

83

And I got confirmation of some things in the Sierra Club
that I suspected but didn't know about. I didn't realize how
vehement Dick Leonard was .

Lage: You didn't get that impression from him?
Pesonen: I didn't get it personally.

Lage: I think maybe Phil Berry did. He might have been present at the
meetings; maybe you weren't even present.

Pesonen: Well, yes, he was much more active in the club than I was. I was
never very active in the club; I am not much of a joiner,
actually. I'll talk to Phil about that.

Lage: Today we are going to go over what we missed about Bodega and
wind that topic up. Did you have a chance to look through the
scrapbooks that Julie mentioned?

Pesonen: I'm not sure what Julie means by the scrapbooks. I've got about
eight volumes of newspaper clippings.

Lage: Maybe that is what she was talking about. That would take you a
while to review.

Pesonen: That is a huge undertaking.

Lage: I thought maybe we had one scrapbook of pictures.

Pesonen: No. There is a little book of commemorative parties we had when
PG&E pulled out, but that was a gift to me at that party. It is
not historical in that sense.

Lage: Are the eight volumes going to go to the Bancroft sometime?

Pesonen: They could. They are all bound up in binders with all of the
newspaper clippings for years .

Lage: Think of what a source it would be for somebody. Joel Hedgpeth's
Bodega papers are there.

Pesonen: Well, Hedgpeth is a real pack rat. In fact, I got that out of
the Wellock article, that there was correspondence between
Hedgpeth and me that I had forgotten all about, that Wellock very
selectively quotes from to support the thesis he has got that we
were precursors of a technique of agitation that ripened and got
mature in the sixties, and we were the pioneers of it. I don't
share that thesis, and I think he had to get a little selective
in his choice of materials to support it, but--

Lage: Well, you wouldn't necessarily have to say you were doing this
consciously, but do you think that you did bring new techniques
that were precursors or were elaborated on later? Or maybe even
served as a model for later?

Pesonen: I don't know. It certainly was no conscious plan on our part. I
think it was happening all across the country and it was
happening in various ways depending on what the issue was. Right
here in the Bay Area you had three very prominent establishment
women spearheading the "Save the Bay" campaign simultaneously
with the Bodega campaign, and using many of the same techniques.
They were much more decorous and polite about it, but they were
appealing to the same instincts in the public: the emergence of
an environmental consciousness. I thought we were operating on
parallel tracks.

We had different problems, and we had to respond to those
problems in different ways. We had a huge corporation which had
a great deal of political influence and was conscious about
fostering its political influence; it had ties to the University
through the Sproul family; it had been around a long time; it was
a monopoly; it made sure that it gave charitable contributions to
a lot of people; it had a conscious corporate policy of having
its field personnel active in social clubs and service clubs in
the rural areas. This was still largely a rural state. This was
before reapportionment, when each county had a state senator.

Lage: The Rotary Club in Sonoma County had some political impact?

Pesonen: The Rotary Club in Sonoma County could swing the vote of one
state senator. They couldn't now; there have been enormous
political changes in this country. But we had to respond to the
environment that we operated in, and we knew that we would never
prevail if we relied on rural sentiments. They were very
conservative. It was inherent and natural to accept a whole set
of values that are traditional capitalist values. Small
businessmen admire big businessmen. [laughter] And believe them
and believe they do right.

Lage: And that it is good?
Pesonen: And that it is good.

Lage: The statements of Nin Guidotti [Sonoma County supervisor] are
just classic.

Pesonen: Sure.

85

So we had to respond to that environment and we had to pull
that issue into the urban Bay Area. The balloon event on
Memorial Day, 1963, is a classic because it visually and
dramatically caught the attention of the urban community,
reminding it that its destiny was tied to what was happening way
out here, fifty miles away in a little rural county up north on
the coast. Until that kind of thing took place in the mind of
the urban public, or at least some opinion leaders in the urban
public, we didn't have a chance. Whereas the Save the Bay
Association had the bay right here in the middle of the urban
community, and they could use different techniques. But if the
situation had been reversed, I think they would have used the
same kind of techniques we did.

So we didn't see ourselves as pioneers of any technique. We
tailored what we did to the needs of that campaign.

Some Key Figures; Doris Sloan, Joe Neilands, Charlie Smith, Sam
Rogers

Lage: I don't think we talked about Doris Sloan. Did--

Pesonen: I don't know how much we talked about Doris, but Doris was a very
important factor in the campaign. Everybody was important; it
was very much a team effort. Maybe that was just a reflection of
my style of leadership.

Doris had been active in the Sierra Club in the newly
organized--! don't know if it was officially organized, but it
was a nascent- -Redwood Chapter. She was a young, active woman
with a lot of energy.

Lage: Did she live in Bodega?

Pesonen: She lived in Sebastopol. She had been married; I think she had
recently been divorced. She had four small children. I don't
know how she got the energy to do all of this stuff. She was
very active in the American Friends Service Committee. I don't
know how she supported herself.

Lage: She is a scientist now, at UC, isn't she?

Pesonen: After Bodega, she went to the University and got a master's
degree in geology and she is now an instructor.

Lage: But at the time she wasn't?

86

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

At the time she didn't have the scientific background. But she
was very bright and sensible and has a low threshold of anger
over the way PG&E was steamrolling through the county. There may
have been some other connections that got her stirred up. I
don't remember how I got in touch with her, I just remember that
very early on, Doris was involved and she really got involved
after that meeting in Santa Rosa in November of 1962 when
Alexander Grendon stood up and made a fool of himself.

That fired her imagination?

It fired the whole audience up, as I described in our last
session. After that, Doris was full time. She wasn't being
paid, but we gave her a title: Sonoma County coordinator. She
was the eyes and ears of what was going on in Sonoma County. If
we had to appear before the board of supervisors or the planning
commission, Doris would make the appearance. I didn't have time
to go do all of that. We were constantly in communication about
what was happening and strategies. I don't recall that we ever
had any disagreements about what to do. Somebody would have an
idea; we would toss it around, and if it was good, we would go
with it.

It sounds very informal,
council?

Did you have formal meetings of the

We never had any elections; we didn't keep any minutes. It was
very informal. It was a network more than an organization.

Were there certain people that you were always careful to check
with before something was decided on?

Oh sure. Well, there were lots of things I did on my own.
Pretty soon after you network long enough with people, you get to
know what their reaction is going to be. We were in almost daily
contact, so people shared information, and we had enough of a mix
of talents that without there being any real discussion about it,
things would just fall into place, depending on who could do
what, where they were, when they had the time, and what abilities
they had.

Did you have any trouble keeping people stirred up? The people
at the top, shall we say?

Not the inner group, no. We stayed stirred up. We didn't work
on it all of the time. It is not a nine-to-five job. We
responded to needs.

Lage:

Now, you didn't get any salary?

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Pesonen: No, I didn't get paid at all.

Lage: You were supporting yourself on the side?

Pesonen: I was supporting myself on the side. After the first year of the
campaign or so, Julie and I were married and Julie was working,
so Julie gets a lot of credit for this. She carried this
worthless husband [laughter] through the whole thing. We lived
off of her salary.

Lage: Well, she was pretty committed to it too, it seems.

Pesonen: She was very supportive. She was a tireless worker. She had a
lot of good ideas, too. But she had a regular job. She worked
for [UC Agricultural] Ag Extension, and I was either writing or
agitating or doing whatever I was doing. Sometimes I would pick
up a little money on the side, maybe some kind of little
consulting job or something, but it was mainly a gratuity.
Somebody was trying to help me out and justify it to themselves
that it wasn't a gift. I don't even remember what that was, it
was so little.

Lage: You said you worked for Neilands. Or was that earlier?

Pesonen: That was earlier. That was when I was writing A Visit to the
Atomic Park.

Lage: Was he involved in the inner circle, too?
Pesonen: Neilands was very much involved.
Lage: Tell me about him.

Pesonen: Neilands is an interesting guy. Neilands was more ideological

about this. He was very much a public power advocate. He comes
from an old radical background and we sometimes had some
disagreements with Neilands about what direction the campaign
should take.

Lage: Did he want to take it in a more ideological way?

Pesonen: He wanted to take it in a more ideological direction. I firmly
eschewed that. I thought that would be the death knell. We had
to keep it completely unideological. We were going to save
Bodega Head. It was a bad project, it was full of risks, and
that was it. We weren't interested in taking over PG&E, we
weren't interested in promoting public power. There was a
movement then for Berkeley to buy out the PG&E distribution
system.

88

Lage: I remember that. Was that at the same time?

Pesonen: Neilands was very active in that campaign. His bugaboo was the
Raker Act. The Raker Act had been passed as a compensation for
the damming of Hetch Hetchy during the progressive era, and the
Raker Act required that San Francisco buy out the PG&E
distribution system and become a public power city. There are
seven or eight cities in the state that have their own electric
distribution system: Alameda, Glendale, Anaheim, Sacramento had
bought out the PG&E system in the late forties or early
fifties — Santa Clara, Ukiah. There are little communities around
that as a holdover from the progressive era had developed their
own electric distribution systems. They didn't generate
electricity; they wheel power across PG&E lines. PG&E was
required to distribute it, and they bought Bureau of Reclamation
power. Then the Reclamation Act gave preference for the sale of
federally produced electricity from federal dams to municipal
systems.

Well, Neilands wanted Berkeley to have a municipal system.
And he had an ally, a guy named Charlie Smith. Charlie Smith was
a great advocate for public power and Berkeley's buying the
distribution system. They wanted to bring that issue in and
bring enforcement of the Raker Act to compel San Francisco to
comply with that federal statute. I wasn't opposed to the idea;
I just didn't think that it ought to be mixed up with the Bodega
campaign.

Charlie Smith was helpful because in those days there were
no fax machines ; there were no xerox machines ; there were no
computers. So our printing was done either on old offsets or
mimeograph. Charlie fancied himself as a pamphleteer in the Tom
Paine tradition. He had a mimeograph machine in his basement.
It was like stepping back into the revolutionary times. He would
wear a sandwich board [laughter] and print up these pamphlets--he
even had a folding machine, I remember, that would fold them
three ways—and stand out on the corner down here at Shattuck and
University and hand out these pamphlets on anything; on all kinds
of things: world peace, stopping atmospheric testing of weapons,
buying out the PG&E system. He had ten or fifteen issues that he
was a pamphleteer on. He would spend his Saturdays and Sundays
pamphleting. It was his recreation.

Lage: What kind of work was he doing?

Pesonen: He worked for the Department of Highways; he was an engineer.

The Department of Transportation now. He was a nice guy, and he
did all of our production for free, which was a big saving. We
couldn't afford to go to a print shop and mimeograph all of those

89

newsletters and press releases and stuff,
fun.

Charlie was a lot of

Lage:
Pesonen:

He and Neilands were the champions of public power.
Neilands gave some money. He was a full professor at the
University and was very kind to me by giving me that job in his
lab at night while I wrote that pamphlet. I have kind of lost
touch with Neilands over the years.

He is interested now in animal rights.

He is very much interested in animal rights now, I understand.
That is just from what I get in the paper. I haven't talked to
him about it.

Lage: I hear Charlie Smith's name periodically,
what connection.

I can't remember in

Pesonen: I think he still lives in Berkeley. Once Bodega was over, there
was not a tight bond among all of us. A tight bond and a close
friendship continued with Doris Sloan and the Kortums. Sam
Rogers, if he hadn't moved away, I think we would have stayed
good friends, but he is teaching up in Montana, I think, and we
kind of lost track of each other because he lives so far away.

Lage: Who was Sam Rogers?

Pesonen: Sam Rogers was a grad student who worked for Neilands. Rogers
was the one who spent the time and dug out the contradictions
between the seismic geologic and engineering reports submitted
with the AEC license in late '62 with those same kinds of
material that had been given to the PUC. And he found just major
inconsistencies. It was his work that was the foundation of the
petition we filed in early '63- -I don't remember when we filed
exactly—with the PUC to reopen the whole proceedings that led to
Bill Bennett's dissent from the decision of the PUC to deny that
application. I think I mentioned that last time.

Attorney Barney Dreyfus and the Use of Lawsuits at Bodega

Lage: Then there was a lawsuit you mentioned that you said would now be
considered a frivolous lawsuit. That followed?

Pesonen: That was right about the same time. I think it was in the spring
of '63.

90

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Did you see it as a frivolous lawsuit at the time?
delaying action?

A sort of

I wasn't a lawyer then. No, I didn't think it was frivolous. I
thought what the county did was a major violation of the law. It
had to be wrong some way or another for the board of supervisors
of Sonoma County, without a public hearing, to grant a permit to
build this massive industrial facility on a beautiful site.

It would be illegal now, wouldn't it?

Sure, today there would be an environmental impact report, there
would be ten thousand permits-
Lots of public hearings?

Lots of public hearings. There would be all kinds of stuff. But
that didn't happen in those days. So we persuaded Barney Dreyfus
to file that suit. And it wasn't a frivolous suit — I don't think
it was frivolous. It was a creative piece of lawyering.

That is a good way of putting it.
come in on it?

Now, how did Barney Dreyfus

We were looking for a lawyer to do something. We knew we had to
file some lawsuits that were vehicles for getting some attention,
for one.

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

In a way that was new, too.
common thing.

The environmental lawsuit was not a

Not yet. It was not a common thing yet. It was pretty much my
idea that we had to file some lawsuits because there was
something that was wrong. I was not a lawyer and I didn't know
exactly what was wrong, but it just felt wrong.

It should be illegal.

"Where there is a wrong, there is a remedy" is what they tell you
in law school. That is not always the case, but I believed it
anyway at that time. We were looking around for a lawyer. We
knew that we weren't going to get any big conservative law firm
to represent us. Barney's firm was Garry, Dreyfus and McTernan
at that time. They were probably all old members of the
Communist party; they were all idealistic radicals from the
thirties. Barney was a very elegant lawyer.

Lage:

How old a man?

91

Pesonen: He was probably in his fifties then. Charlie Garry had not

become famous through the Black Panthers yet. He was a criminal
defense lawyer. And McTernan did civil law, probate and other
things. Their clientele was the radical community; the old left
community in the Bay Area. They had all been very active in the
National Lawyers' Guild, which had been a target of the House Un-
American Activities Committee. Barney had been president, and I
think Frank had been president, and I think Charlie Garry had
been president at one time. At least Garry had been president of
the Bay Chapter which was the biggest chapter outside New York
City of the National Lawyers' Guild. The Lawyers' Guild was a
left-wing bar association; I don't think there is any doubt about
that.

They were the people who were used to taking risks and used
to trying to be creative. You had to be creative if you were
going to protect yourself. Barney had been called before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, and I think Frank and
Charlie had been and had distinguished themselves very well.

Barney was very reluctant to take the case.
Lage: Who approached him?

Pesonen: Doug Hill- -Doug and Mary Ann Hill were very helpful in the
campaign. I don't remember how I met them. Doug was a law
student and they came to a meeting one time. I think we had a
meeting in Berkeley and word got out. They showed up and Doug
got very interested in the campaign. Doug was more interested in
the printing and the communications side of it. He and I, I
remember, spent all night one night running an old offset machine
he bought someplace to print the pamphlet about the earthquake
hazards and bind it ourselves. We did everything ourselves,
typed it ourselves, typed the plates; we did it all, the two of
us.

Doug was active in the Lawyers' Guild, and he somehow found
Barney. I didn't know anything about that world. I was not
active in left-wing causes, and I didn't know what the Lawyers'
Guild was. Barney was very reluctant. Francis Heisler was
helping us, but Heisler was not really a lawyer.

Lage: He didn't practice?

Pesonen: Heisler was a unique character. He was a Jewish refugee from the
holocaust. He looked like Albert Einstein. He had white hair
down to his collar, a very kind, elderly face; he was the
spitting image of Albert Einstein, every classic picture of
Einstein. And he was a Talmudic type. He lived in another

92

world, and he would file lawsuits. I am told he was a pretty
good lawyer back in Chicago, but he had kind of semiretired and
was living in Carmel. He would write letters and do things for
us, but he wasn't in a position to file any lawsuits.

So we called a meeting down at a hotel near the San
Francisco airport. Heisler was coming through San Francisco on
his way to Chicago, and he agreed to meet with Barney and try to
talk Barney into taking the case. I still have a photograph
someplace of Barney sitting back on a couch in some motel down
there by the San Francisco airport and Heisler with the light
coming in the window, shining off the top of his head, with four
or five other people--! think Neilands was there, I was there,
Doug Hill was there, maybe Doris was there, Jim Goodwin--! can
just see that picture. Heisler very eloquently described what
this case and the whole thing was about. It was a breakthrough,
historically, and Barney had a professional obligation to take
the case even if we didn't have any money. To Barney's credit,
he finally, after a long time, said he would do it. My heart was
thrilled.

Nowadays, you go out and get the Sierra Club Legal Defense
Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, or some other lawyer. Even
the big law firms have pro bono operations that will do these
things. But those days were different. You couldn't get a
lawyer. I told Barney we would try to raise a thousand dollars,
which today wouldn't get you in the door at a law firm; wouldn't
get you a cup of coffee. And he put on it a young, very bright
lawyer in the office, Don Kerson. Don Kerson really handled the
legal work; drafted the complaint and went with Barney to make
the appearance. Ultimately, we paid Barney the thousand dollars.

I got kind of disenchanted after maybe six or eight months.
It didn't seem like Barney was doing enough. I made a terrible
mistake, which didn't have any permanent consequences. I got a
call one day from Melvin Belli, and Belli said he wanted to work
for us. We were getting a lot of publicity, and we were getting
a lot of ink and attention, and I think that if there is anything
that is mother's milk to Melvin Belli, it is the press,
[laughter] So he invited us over to his office on Montgomery
Street.

Lage: That wonderful office that you can peer into from the street?

Pesonen: It is full of antiques, and he sits there and pontificates. So
we had a big meeting over in his office.

n

93

Pesonen: Belli was working with the Anti-Digit Dialing League.
Lage: What was the Anti-Digit Dialing League?

Pesonen: Well, Pacific Telephone at that point had announced that it was

going to abandon the old prefixes for phone numbers, Klondike and
Thornhill. You used to dial the first two letters and then five
numbers. You just remembered phone numbers by the word prefix.
I have forgotten what they were now. But people were very
attached to them.

Lage: They had kind of neighborhood ties.

Pesonen: They were very sentimental. There was also the campaign to save
the cable cars going on at that time, so the city was full of
this sort of nostalgic turmoil. And Belli was one of the leaders
of the Anti-Digit Dialing League. That was winding down, and I
think he wanted another utility to take on to get some more ink.
We had a long meeting with him, and he said we were doing a great
job and he would like to handle it. Apparently he called Barney
to see how Barney would feel about it, and Barney told Charlie
Garry, and Garry was furious. He just exploded. He called me
in, and he just read me out like I have never been read out in my
life. Here they had put their firm on the line; they had done
this for free; they had taken great risks; they had done it out
of eleemosynary instincts and out of belief in the cause; and
here I was going around behind their backs to some other lawyer.
Charlie liked ink too, you see. [laughter] The only thing we
were going to steal from Charlie if we went to Belli was the
opportunity to get your name in the papers .

Belli never followed through with it. He is a flake. That
probably shouldn't be on the tape.

Lage: That he is a flake? Well, you can take it out, but I think
people know. [laughter]

Pesonen: But Barney was a wonderful man. He had a great sense of dignity,
he was very bright, and he never lost sight of the objective of
what he wanted to accomplish. He never exhibited anger. He was
always kind. He was widely respected throughout the bar, even by
the most conservative people who hated his politics; they adored
him. He had a nice, wry sense of humor. He was just one of
these people you adored.

Lage: Did he take a larger role in the campaign?

Pesonen: He never took a role outside the lawyer's role. He'd give me

advice now and then if I asked for it, but he didn't try to put

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

himself out in front and make strategy,
what our roles were.

Did he get committed to the cause?

He was very clear about

Oh sure, he thought we were on the right track, and he was
delighted when we won. He was one of the first people that I
called when we got word that PG&E was pulling out.

But the lawsuit itself, did that have much of an effect?

Oh, that was a flash in the pan. We got one day's press out of
that and that was gone. We filed two or three, but they were
little procedural kind of lawsuits. Hold a hearing instead of
going ahead. They were attempts to compel some process to take
place. We never filed any lawsuits to substantively stop the
plant. We had no authority for that.

That is one little byway in this whole story. I suppose
Wellock would find in it support for his thesis that we were
precursors of a radical movement. We certainly drew on people
from the left because they were and still are to some extent,
although times have changed a lot in the last thirty years in
that political landscape, the people who had seen oppression.
They were the people who organized the freedom rides in the civil
rights movement; they were people who wanted social change.

And they weren't afraid of PG&E, I would think.

They weren't afraid of PG&E. They weren't afraid of anything.
They weren't afraid of rednecks in the South who gunned them
down.

So there was a ferment in the country going on, and I guess
it was just natural that we would come along and be part of it.

Rose Gaffney; A Fearless Volcano

Lage: I don't think you have really described Rose Gaffney on the tape.
I think you told me about her when we had our first meeting. It
might be nice if you could talk about Rose.

Pesonen: I described Rose in A Visit to the Atomic Park, if I recall

correctly, as looking like Bodega Head. She was a big, huge,
homely woman with a great big bulbous nose and a wrinkled face.
She just emanated energy. Her life story, as I understand it,

95

and I don't remember where I heard it- -part of it I heard from
her, but she was kind of private about it--was that she and her
family were immigrants from Poland who had come to Canada around
the time of the First World War, maybe before. She must have
been a pretty attractive young woman, and she ended up, for some
reason, as a housekeeper for a family in the Napa Valley. She
got pregnant and had to leave there to have the baby- -I never
heard what happened to that child- -and went to work as a
housekeeper for the Gaffney family who were dairy farmers out in
the Bodega area. She married one of the Gaffney boys and
survived all of the Gaffneys and inherited the ranch.

Lage: Which was on Bodega Head?

Pesonen: It was on Bodega Head. It occupied most of the headlands. It
wasn't a very productive ranch.

Lage: I doesn't look like very rich country.

Pesonen: It isn't very rich. It is sandy and windswept. There are very
few nutrients in that sand. But she loved that landscape. She
would just prowl it. She knew every little rock and every little
spring. She found lots of arrowheads; she had an arrowhead
collection which she said should go to the University, and it was
collected from all over. People would bring her arrowheads from
the Sierra or from the Sonora Desert. She'd stick them all in
her big box of arrowheads and claim they were all from Bodega
Head. [laughter]

She was just a fiercely independent person who was devoted
to that land in an emotional way. It was all she had. She
leased it out to people that ran a few cows on it, and that was
her source of income.

Lage: And she lived out there?

Pesonen: She lived in a little house right by Salmon Creek. There is a
cluster of houses down there by the creek, and I guess it had
been the old farm house. She lived there alone, but she was a
mountainous woman and absolutely fearless. She wasn't afraid of
anybody or anything. She was smart in a cunning sort of peasant
way. She figured things out her own way, but she was always
figuring things out; she never stopped thinking about things.
She got it in her head that the original land grant from the
Spanish to whoever was the predecessor in title of the Gaffney's
had some restrictions that would impose a public trust on all of
that land .

Lage:

Interesting that she would have thought of that.

96

Pesonen: She had a probate lawyer here in the Bay Area who represented her
in the condemnation action, and he tried to develop that theory
as a defense in the condemnation action, but it didn't work. But
she collected all kinds of papers, and she started reading
history and reading Bancroft's history of California. Anything
she could get her hands on that would buttress this theory of
hers. That is all she would talk about after a while. In some
way it was tied to her sense of oneness with that landscape. She
was such a colorful person. She was absolutely fearless. She
would stand up in the middle of a meeting and start to let loose.
She had a big booming voice. She wasn't unarticulate; she could
be very articulate, and she could be very emotional about it and
it would come across some way that there was this powerful
personality boiling inside this huge, shapeless woman- -she wore
these old cotton dresses that had no shape to them at all that
just sort of draped down to the floor and old beat-up shoes. She
smelled terrible; she never took a bath.

Lage: Did she have much money to defend herself from the condemnation?

Pesonen: No, she didn't have any money. No, I think her lawyer was going
to get paid out of the sales price after the condemnation went
through. That is usually what happens. She had enough to live
on, and she had an old car. She kept her house in pretty good
shape.

My recollection of her is odd. It is not like a lot of
people. A lot of people you remember particular things they did
or you remember their character, but I just have this big image
of a kind of volcano of a woman that just seemed to be present
all of the time. (laughter]

The Role of the University of California

Lage: Is there anyone else we have missed that we should talk about?
We haven't talked about the University very much, only alluding
to the University's role, which seems interesting.

Pesonen: What I knew about the University, I got second-hand from
Hedgpeth.

Lage: So he sort of researched it?

Pesonen: Well, he knew all of the people. He was a marine biologist
himself. I knew Starker Leopold [wildlife biologist, UC
professor and administrator], and I was very disappointed in

97

Starker when he testified that the University was not interested
[in opposing the power plant at Bodega, near the site for a
proposed UC marine station] at the Public Utilities Commission.

Lage: He had such a reputation for integrity.

Pesonen: Yes, and his father's [Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County
Almanac] reputation permeated the environmental movement. In
those days, the Bible of the emerging environmental movement was
A Sand County Almanac. Starker basked in that glow of his
father's wonderful writing. I don't know why Starker did what he
did.

Lage: You had known him when you were a student, probably?

Pesonen: I had known him as a student. He had been one of my professors.
I had taken wildlife biology from him or wildlife management. I
knew him from the wilderness study, the ORCC study, and some
other things. I don't remember how I got to know him. I first
met him when I was a student of his .

Starker just terribly disappointed me. I expected him to
come over and stand up and say this facility is going to dump hot
water and radioactivity in a place that is the greatest site for
a marine lab on the Pacific coast; it is going to destroy an
irreplaceable resource. He said none of those things. He hedged
and he prevaricated, I think. He disappointed a lot of us.
Hedgpeth was furious. He fulminated all over the place about it.

So there was a lot of curiosity over why this had happened.
Why would a man of such integrity, of such scientific purity, in
a way, take a position which was so bureaucratic and so
politically influenced?

Lage: He was vice chancellor at the time?

Pesonen: I think he was a vice chancellor by then. We had a lot of

speculation, but I didn't have any inside information. It was
speculation that PG&E, through the [family of former UC President
Robert Gordon] Sproul connection, through [former chancellor and
then chairman of the AEC] Glenn Seaborg, who knows through what
channels, through the Hearst family, maybe, who knows, had
persuaded the University to pull out.

We got our hands on that report by the committee headed by
Emerson.

Lage: The faculty committee?

98

Pesonen: The faculty committee. Ralph Emerson was a marine biologist on
the faculty and the committee had been asked to go and find an
alternate site. They had surveyed the coast and came back with a
report that contained a sentence that frankly stated, this is not
an exact quote, but it is pretty close, "A unique and
irreplaceable site for study of marine biology is being
sacrificed for power production." That is pretty strong words
for an academic report. We got our hands on that report, and
after it was all over, I went and interviewed Emerson and I made
a chapter in a book that I wrote but never published that
contains what I found about it.

Emerson was very reticent to talk about pressures having
been put on him, but he pretty much conceded that pressure from
the administration had been put on the faculty to mute his
criticism and not participate in the Public Utilities Commission
hearings or anything else, that would jeopardize the plans. I
don't think there is any real doubt about that now.

Lage: Did you ever have any conversations with Seaborg?

Pesonen: [laughter]

Lage: It must be a good question!

Pesonen: Oh, Seaborg despises me. Seaborg still despises me to this day.
When I was appointed general manager of the East Bay Regional
Park District, he wrote a bitter letter to the board of directors
castigating them for appointing me. That was only 1985.

I only recall seeing Seaborg once, and that was in about
1965, after Bodega was over--maybe it was December of '64. PG&E
had pulled out in October, the American Nuclear Society and
Atomic Industrial Forum had their annual convention in San
Francisco in December of that year at the St. Francis Hotel. I
went over there to watch and listen and have fun. And I got into
the elevator with Seaborg. You know, he is about six feet, six
inches tall, a great big man. I stood next to him in this
crowded elevator and I said, "Good afternoon, Dr. Seaborg. My
name is David Pesonen. I don't know whether you know me." He
looked down at me and he said, "I know who you are." The
elevator doors opened and he stepped out on the mezzanine and I
was going someplace else, and I never saw him again. And that is
the only exchange of words I have ever had with Glenn Seaborg.

Lage: Were his feelings about you based on what you had written?

99

Pesonen: It was probably from what I had written and the fact that I am

sure Bodega was what he thought was the crown jewel of his career
as chairman of the AEC. It was going to be the first plant that
was going to break the economic barrier. Here I came along and
in his eyes sabotaged it. Sabotaged it for extraneous reasons as
far as he was concerned, out of probably what he perceived as
ulterior motives. I don't know what went through his mind. I do
know that he took it very personally, and he has demonstrated, to
me, that he has taken it very personally. I have no animosity
toward him. He was doing his job as he saw it, and he is a
prominent and properly distinguished man, but I didn't care. I
don't care. It is too bad. I think it is his loss. We could
probably have some nice visits.

Lage: It is too bad he carried those feelings for so long. It

surprises me. I guess I have heard very positive things about
him in other settings.

Pesonen: I'm sure he is a fine person. But anyway, that has been my only
contact with Seaborg. I have written about Seaborg in A Visit to
the Atomic Park and other pamphlets and things. It is too ripe a
fact that he left the University at the time this controversy was
just getting started and went to be chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, which had the promotional role for nuclear power, not
to think there is a connection. In fact, the article in Pacific
Historical Review makes that connection, and that is written by
the historian for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not me.

Seaborg resented the Department of the Interior intrusion
into this process. He apparently demonstrated his resentment.
That was all history; I didn't know about it. That went on in
Washington and I wasn't part of that.

Speculations on Conspiracies and Phone Taps

Lage: I mentioned Dave Brower's feeling that the reason PG&E was

supportive of Point Reyes National Seashore back in '62 when it
was authorized was that they wanted this open space downwind from
Bodega. Would you agree with that?

Pesonen: I never saw any evidence of it. It is a plausible theory.
Lage: You did not originate that idea? That is Dave's idea?

Pesonen: No, that idea didn't come from me. It kind of makes sense. But
I think it takes too much away from PG&E. They are not incapable

100

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

of some public spirit, even back then. Now, they are quite a
different company; they are much more enlightened now. But they
weren't completely unenlightened then.

I think that one of their land agents was active in that campaign
for Point Reyes, but he also had a life in his own community and
was interested in the environment of Marin, so just as a private
individual he could have been--

Sure. That makes perfect sense. I don't know if it was a
corporate strategy connected with Bodega or not. I simply have
no information about that. If Brower wants to speculate about
that and has some information about it, I'd be interested to
know, but I--

People I have asked who have been involved in the Point Reyes
campaign just can't imagine it. It just boggles their mind that
anybody could come up with that idea.

It doesn't boggle ray mind,
not .

I don't know whether to believe it or

Lage: It is an interesting thought. Now, what about the ideas of phone
tapping or things like that going on?

Pesonen: Well, until I read, last night, Wellock's piece where he has a
footnote that cites a J. Edgar Hoover file on us, I never
attached much significance to those speculations. I am not a
paranoid person. Maybe I am still too innocent.

My reaction to those kinds of things is twofold. One is
that it may be true, but it doesn't make any difference. If you
spend your energy brooding about it, it is energy you don't have
to pursue what is important.

Lage: It also deflects public interest?

Pesonen: It changes the issue. I am very goal oriented in these things,
and I am pretty good at keeping my eye on what is going to work
and chasing wire taps does not work. It is very hard to prove,
and if you do prove it, once it is over it is over. I suppose
Watergate was an exception to that, but I didn't have the
resources to chase that one down.

Lage: It wasn't something that you felt at the time, it sounds like.
You didn't suspect it?

101

Pesonen: We were careful on the phone. We thought it was possible and so
you just didn't say a lot. Sensitive things you just did not say
over the phone.

Lage: So you did think of it at the time. One other little thing: in
A Visit to the Atomic Park on the frontispiece it is a dollar
"Contribution toward a People's Park at Bodega Head." That
struck me. Was that a common term at the time- -People ' s Park?

Pesonen: I just made that up. We were the first ones to use that term.
Lage: It got such prominence later.

Pesonen: In Berkeley, yes. Much later. I don't think there is any
connection.

Looking Back; The Disembodied Evil of Industrial Civilizat ion

Lage: What ever happened to this book on Bodega? It sounds like

everything we are talking about is probably written down in the
book.

Pesonen: Some of it is. I started to write the book as soon as this

campaign was over in ' 64 . I had applied to law school and been
admitted and then went to Preble Stolz who was the admissions
dean at that time.

I had met Preble in the Bodega campaign. He was a friend of
the Goodwins, whom I had met also through the campaign, and they
are now the godparents of Julie's and my kids. Preble was a
friend of theirs. I went to Preble and I said, "Look, I want to
write this book and I can't do that and go to law school. Can I
put this off for a year?" So he agreed to put my admission off
for a year without my having to take the LSAT and do everything
over again, and I just started to write.

Well, I also went fishing, and I wrote most of it. I made a
mistake in writing it. I wrote it as though I were a third party
observer. I tried to keep my own role out of it pretty much.
And that is not possible; it doesn't work, because I was too much
a part of it. I was too central a figure. So I wasn't satisfied
with it. It didn't strike me as having artistic integrity. It
was not a true story. So I didn't publish it. I had an advance
to publish it, an advance from--

Lage: You couldn't revamp it and make it an "I" book?

102

Pesonen: I thought about revamping it, but now my ideas are different and
it would be a different book. So the manuscript is around. In
fact, I pulled it out the other night and tried to read it again.

Lage: Now, when you say your ideas are different and it would be a

different book, is that something worth commenting on? I think
it is interesting how your view of things changed with the
passage of time or maturity or whatever.

Pesonen: Well, it is multi-leveled. I tie my perception of it now, and I
would use this as a centerpiece of an introduction to the new
book if I wrote it : I was driving out there one night in my old
Ford, and it was turning evening--! can remember this so
intensely—and I couldn't figure out why PG&E was continuing to
insist on building this plant. The was probably in spring of
'64. By this time we had Saint-Amand' s study, we had all kinds
of information that this was a terrible decision. It was a
terrible decision technically, it was just bad. It was so
stupid. Here was this great, well-run corporation pursuing this
idiocy and getting beat up in the newspapers every day. Their
dogged determination to go ahead; it didn't make any sense to me
and I was constantly trying to figure that out.

I had almost like a mystical insight—in my mind it is all
connected with that glowing evening landscape with the eucalyptus
trees on the hillsides— that I was up against some kind of evil.
Not evil people — a disembodied evil of some type that was out in
the world. And it was scary. I wasn't angry; I was overwhelmed
by this sadness that there could be such evil in the world that
was immune to reason, immune to sound argument. We weren't
agitating; when we put something out, we studied what we were
talking about. We had a respect for facts.

Well, that idea has stayed with me. It is almost a mystical
feeling. What I would like to do is convert that to an argument.
If it is possible —

II

Pesonen: It wouldn't be an original thought with me in some ways; Dave

Brower has talked about it and a lot of people have written about
this sort of moment in history of the planet that is industrial
civilization. I suppose Henry Adams felt the same things when he
wrote The Education of Henry Adams. There is an aspect of that
that is going on in my mind. That industrial civilization is
very dehumanizing and destructive, ultimately, and has no sense
of history and no sense of the future. This nuclear power
development is a centerpiece of that. The reason so many people
in the Sierra Club and elsewhere and most of the public was

103

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

supportive of nuclear power was that at some visceral level we
knew we were using up the resources of the world to support our
comfortable way of living, and we had to buy some insurance
against when they ran out.

We are totally dependent on petroleum. We farm with it, we
heat with it, we get around with it, we couldn't live without it
in our current way. And nuclear power looked like the salvation
of civilization when it runs out of oil. And I'm sure it is
still seen that way by a lot of people. In fact, there is a
resurgence of interest in that. And I want to say something
about that. What I want to say, I have to sit down and write
before I know exactly. Right now, it is a holistic image in my
head that is related in some way to that experience I had that
one evening driving out to Bodega. I am not very articulate
about it right now because there are too many pieces to it all at
once.

It is a hard thing to express and then relate to the—

I can do it. I know it can be converted to an elegant argument,
but I keep putting it off for some reason.

It might not be the time.

Influences of the Bodega Experience on PG&E

Lage: My next question has to do with the influences of the Bodega

campaign. Do you think Bodega made a change in PG&E, or did they
have to be hit two or three more times?

Pesonen: Well, it certainly started the process of change. I think Diablo
Canyon finished it. They just paid too high a price for their
old way of doing things. There was a change of personalities;
some old dinosaurs left and new blood came in. They faced a
different Public Utilities Commission under Jerry Brown. There
was the influence of the Environmental Defense Fund—Tom Graff
and Zach Willy- -on their attitude towards energy conservation.

Lage: On PG&E directly?

Pesonen: On PG&E directly. They were able to persuade them—it took quite
a while—that they could make money with energy conservation.

Lage: So that was a new tack?

104

Pesonen: That was a new tack and it was very creative on the part of Graff
and Willy. The whole society changed. They couldn't stay the
way they were, it would have been fatal to them. Their survival
depended on their becoming more enlightened because they were
dealing with a more enlightened, more active public, a much more
active regulatory climate, much more regulatory and
environmentally funded legislation. They live in a different
world now. They could either go down with their old ideology or
adapt. They were smart enough to adapt. But Bodega certainly
gave arguments to people within the company who were pushing for
change .

No organization is monolithic. There will be disputes
within about what direction they should take and they take time
to get resolved. I am sure that there were people who were more
enlightened than some of the old guard. I don't know a lot of
these people—but I know enough about institutions to know that
this had to have happened—that argued for swifter change, and
they could argue from events like Bodega that it is in the
company's self-interest to change. Whereas if they had won at
Bodega, the power of the old guard would have been reinforced.
They would have said, "Look, we can beat these people back."

Lage: I was surprised that one of these articles, I think the Wellock,
shows that they made the approach to the Sierra Club over at
Nipomo Dunes and Diablo right during this Bodega campaign and
that was Ed Wayburn and —

Pesonen: Yes, they learned that they had to do their political homework in
a different way. They couldn't go just to the Rotary Club and
the Chamber of Commerce, they had to go to these organizations
like the Sierra Club which could cause them trouble. That is why
they have got Diablo now: they did it right. They did a terrible
job of engineering, but they did a pretty good job of
politicking.

Personal Impacts of the Bodega Campaign

Lage: You had said last time that this campaign shaped your life in a
number of ways.

Pesonen: It made a public figure out of me, and I've been a public figure
in some sense ever since. I am not really a public figure type
of person. I am a pretty private person, but it thrust me into
the public eye, and it was a bigger event than I thought it was

105

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

to a lot of people. It had a lot of significance to a great
number of people and for a lot of different reasons.

For the people involved in the association?

No, the public generally. Newspaper reporters knew who I was. I
still run into people on the street who say, "How are you doing,
Mr. Pesonen?" and I have no idea who they are. I run into people
now who remember Bodega- -people introduce me at cocktail parties
and stuff because of Bodega. That is the identification. They
don't remember Point Arena, which I think was a swifter, more
elegant victory in a lot of ways, against a much bigger plant,
with a tougher geologic question. But we had honed our skills by
then. PG&E had also wised up to what they were in for if they
didn't pull out early. But that was a very elegant little
victory.

Shall we talk about that before we talk about law school?
you are feeding right into it?

Since

Pesonen: It came after law school.

So I just became a public figure in many people's eyes. I
continued to live in the Bay Area; I continued to be active in
one way or another in environmental matters. I became a lawyer
who was pretty successful — successful in my lawsuits, not
successful financially, but I was a good lawyer. I got cases
that tended to get public attention, and I knew how to use the
press if it furthered the objective that I was working on. I
understood how the press worked, and I learned it in Bodega. I
learned a lot of lessons in it; I learned a lot about politics, I
learned a lot about public relations, and I learned a lot about
dealing with the press. If I needed to use those lessons to
accomplish something I was working on, I did. I think people
respect the way I think and act, and I think I have a lot of
integrity. People recognize that and I trade on it. I don't
know exactly what happened. I saw the world differently after it
was over, and I continued to see the world differently.

Lage: Did it affect your decision to go to law school, or did it have a
part in the decision?

Pesonen: It had a big part in the decision. And I'm glad I did.
Lage: What was it that made you decide to go to law school?

Pesonen: Power. [laughter] We felt very powerless at Bodega. That whole
story about rounding up Barney Dreyfus --lawyers are a source of

106

power, and if I was going to do any good in the world, I needed
more power.

Lage: You couldn't imagine an environmental campaign now that didn't
have a lawyer signed on.

Pesonen: That didn't have lawyers involved, absolutely! And I didn't know
what else I wanted to do. Law sounded like a way to get power
that could be used in a lot of different ways and used for good.

Lage: Had you considered law before?

Pesonen: I had thought about it, and I remember thinking it was awfully
stuffy and I wasn't sure that I wanted to be involved in
something that was so stuffy. But that changed over time,
particularly in Bodega, when I realized that it didn't have to be
stuffy.

Law School; UC's Boalt Hall, 1965-1968

Lage: How did you find the law school experience? Was it stuffy?

Pesonen: It was hard for me. I am a slow reader; I am not a quick

thinker, and law school was hard. I worked hard in law school.
And Julie put me through law school.

Lage: Wives are very handy.

Pesonen: Julie was a good one. I didn't work much in law school. I

worked in the summer, but during school I didn't work much; I
studied hard. 1 liked it, but I wanted to get out.

Lage: Were there any particular professors who helped shape your
thinking?

Pesonen: No, not particularly.

Lage: Did you find them interested in public issues?

Pesonen: No. They were a little suspicious of public issues. Law schools
tend to be pretty conservative. I liked Jesse Choper, who was
the professor I took constitutional law and contracts law from.
He was a very good teacher, and he later became dean. He was a
fine man, and he was a wonderful teacher. But he wasn't a
political activist. None of them were. I set up the Lawyers'
Guild chapter and became president of it, and I was class

107

valedictorian, not because of academic achievement but because my
classmates elected me.

Lage: It is not from being first in the class?

Pesonen: No, not at all. It has nothing to do with academic achievement.
I suppose if I had been flunking completely I would not have been
selected, but it was an elective process and I was recruited to
it by my classmates.

Lage: That is quite an honor.

Pesonen: Well, I was older and I was irreverent. [laughter] That was
during the Vietnam War, and there was lots of agitation on
campus. I guess it was just my temperament and my irreverence.
I was not awed by law school. I didn't think this was the
Talmudic truth being handed down to us. I questioned it and I
was a little bit sassy with teachers sometimes in class. I was
never disrespectful, but I kept my sense of humor about it.

Lage: Did you get involved in any of the political happenings on campus
during those years?

Pesonen: Yes, a little bit. Not much. On the lower campus I didn't get
involved in those things. But we had a couple of events that
sprung out of the law school itself. The law school always saw
itself as detached from the rest of the University. It calls
itself Boalt Hall; it doesn't call itself the school of law at
the University of California. There is a psychology of lofty
detachment in the law school that is very elitist. So what went
on in the lower campus, that was undergraduates.

Lage: I have never even heard that term: the lower campus.

Pesonen: That was undergraduate high jinks that we weren't too involved

in. Some of the students were, but I was just as elitist as the
rest of them, I guess.

When the Oakland police shot up the house that Bobby Button
and Eldridge Cleaver were hiding in and Bobby Button was killed,
on April 6, 1967, I think, there was a big protest about that and
I spoke at that.

Lage: What drew your attention to that?

Pesonen: The National Lawyers' Guild and the fact that I had been with

them. I worked the summer the second year I was in law school, I
think, as a law clerk in the Dreyfus office, and I ultimately

108

went to work there as his partner. And [Charles] Garry was
involved in--

Lage: Garry was defending the Black Panthers.

Pesonen: So there were these other connections.

Lage: The times were just so different.

Pesonen: Those were lively times. They had to happen, I think.

Defending People's Park Activist Dan Siegel

Lage: Julie said that one of your first cases out of law school was
defending Dan Siegel on People's Park?

Pesonen: Siegel was a year behind me at law school. He had been active in
the Guild, but for some reason he sort of adopted me as his
mentor. He was out here from New York and he didn't know a lot
of people, and he was a very idealistic young law student. He
had written a philosophical paper of some kind--I don't even
remember what it was --but he was very interested in my comments
on it. He wanted me to read it and we talked about it. As soon
as I was out of law school and got admitted to the bar in January
of '69, I went immediately to work in the Garry office.

I think the People's Park event happened in spring of '69,
and Dan was charged with inciting to riot for his speech on the
Sproul Hall steps that ended with the words "Take the park."
That led to several days of violence in town and a couple of
people were killed, I think, and one guy was blinded.

Lage: One person was killed, as I recall.

Pesonen: It was national news, [Governor Ronald] Reagan called in the

National Guard. [Alameda County District Attorney] Ed [Edwin]
Meese came over and arrested hundreds of people. It was a huge,
violent couple of days in Berkeley. And they needed a scapegoat.

So Dan asked me to defend him, and I was delighted to do it,
but I was also very scared because I hadn't tried a case; I had
no trial experience . I knew better than to think that I could do
that by myself, so I asked Mai [Malcolm] Bernstein to come in and
join me.

Lage: He is older?

109

Pesonen: He was older; he was a partner in Bob Truehaft's firm. Doris

Walker, Bob Truehaft--Truehaft, Walker and Bernstein in Oakland.
That was another old radical firm, in the East Bay. Mai was the
youngest partner in that firm, and he was a Harvard or Yale law
school graduate. A very smart guy. He had some trial
experience, and he also had the first amendment seasoning that I
didn't have. I had the abstract learnings from law school, but
he was a street fighter. He knew how to do it if he had to. I
had enough modesty to know that it would be a big mistake for me
to try this case by myself.

Lage: And there was a lot of attention on the case, I remember.

Pesonen: So I asked Mai to help, and Mai was delighted and the two of us

did it together. Mai really took the lead, I think. I get a lot
of credit for it, but I have to give Mai the main credit for that
victory. It was a great learning experience. We tried it in a
municipal court in Berkeley. It was not a felony; it was
misdemeanor inciting to riot. The jury was a lot of the Berkeley
blue rinse set.

Lage: Older Berkeley women who must have been horrified at what was
happening in their community.

Pesonen: Not at all!

Lage: They weren't?

Pesonen: No. It was not a radical jury at all.

Lage: That is what I mean. It must have been very disturbing to them.

Pesonen: No, they were--. Berkeley is a unique town. The blue rinse set
can be pretty radical in this town. I don't remember- -that is
not the whole jury, but there were some older, distinguished
looking women on the jury, and I think it was about a week- long
trial.

Mario Barsotti was the judge. He was a Reagan appointee to
the court. He was a very nice judge. I don't think he was a
terribly bright Judge, but he was a decent judge. There aren't
very many bright judges. If they are bright, they don't become
judges.

Lage: We'll have to get more elaboration of that when we get to the
later points in your career.

Pesonen: They go out and make a lot of money doing something else. I was
being a little bit facetious. But he was a decent judge and

110

followed the law the best he could. The prosecutor, whose name
escapes me at the moment, was a very uptight guy. He is now a
Superior Court judge in Alameda County. But he was a young
deputy district attorney at that time, and he so much wanted a
conviction he could taste it. This was going to make his career.
Of course, the press was there all of the time. I remember after
we argued the case--. I put on a couple of witnesses; our theory
was that this statement, "Take the park," was a metaphorical
statement by Dan that we should, through political means,
accomplish our ends, not physically go down and seize the
property.

Lage: And Dan testified to that?

Pesonen: He testified to that, and we brought in people who had been in
the audience on Sproul Plaza who understood it that way and who
testified that they understood it that way. Well, the jury came
back after deliberating half a day or a day with a note. The
judge took us into the chambers, and he handed us this note from
the foreman, and the note said, "Can we find him sort of guilty?"
[laughter]

Mai said, "That sounds like reasonable doubt to me." The
judge said, "Sounds like that to me, too." The prosecutor was
furious, and he said, "No, it just means they haven't deliberated
long enough." We said, "No, judge, you should go out and read
them the instructions on reasonable doubt again." The judge
agreed. We went out, and the judge read them the instructions.
He said, "I have this note and I can't respond to it directly,
but I can give you some of the instructions you have had." He
read the reasonable doubt instruction again, which is very clear
that if there is a reasonable doubt—unless they feel he is
guilty to a moral certainty, they must acquit. It was not very
long after that that they came in with a "not guilty' .

There was a party after that, but I kind of felt that there
was some culpability on Dan's part; he knew what he was doing.

Lage: He knew that the crowd was at that point?

Pesonen: He knew that it was very likely that this would ignite that

crowd. And I wasn't happy. We have remained friends, in a way,
but it is not a cordial relationship any more. And I think that
it is because he sensed that I disapproved of what he had done.

Lage: Interesting that in your first case you had that dilemma, then.

Pesonen: I was ambivalent about it. I wasn't ambivalent about--! was
delighted to win. That is the lawyer in me; that is the

Ill

gladiator. But there was another part of me that was not
disappointed in the result, sort of disappointed in the person.

Lage: Is this the same Dan Siegel who is now a lawyer for the Oakland
School District?

Pesonen: Yes, he matured too. He is a very good lawyer on civil rights
and employment matters. He was with the city attorney's office
in San Francisco for a while. He was in private practice for a
long time. In fact, he appeared before me once when I was a
judge out in Contra Costa County in a settlement conference.
Then he left private practice and went in to the city attorney's
office on civil rights matters and then became the general
counsel for the Oakland School District about two years ago.
Same guy. His brother is associated with my firm now.

112

V ATTORNEY IN THE FIRM OF GARRY, DREYFUS, McTERNAN, AND BROTSKY
[Interview A: February 27, 19921 II

The Partners and Clients in a Radical Old-Left Firm

Lage: We are going to talk today about your work with Garry, Dreyfus,
etc.

Pesonen: Well, after they represented us on the Bodega nuclear plant
controversy and two or three small actions which had more
political purpose than legal purpose, we impressed each other, I
guess, and so I clerked for them when I was a second-year law
student, for the summer in 1967. I went to a trial with Charlie
Garry of some young black woman from Richmond who had been
rousted by San Francisco police and then accused of some
misdemeanor crimes of some kind to cover up what had happened. I
sat through and helped Charlie do the trial. I was just
fascinated with him as a trial attorney, and I asked him if I
could go to work for them once I got out of law school.

It may or may not have been a career mistake; I don't know.
But I was full of excitement about these radical lawyers . I went
to law school to try to do good things and have some impact on
social change, and they were committed to that. At least they
came across as committed to that. They were still a business and
had to make a living. Barney Dreyfus had some independent
wealth, I think, so he was able to spend more time on important
political cases, although Charlie was temperamentally committed
that way, and so was Frank McTernan. They were the three
partners, along with Alan Brotsky who had joined the firm a year
or two before I went to work there and who had a successful labor
practice of his own before that. So it was Garry, Dreyfus,
McTernan, and Brotsky when I joined the firm.

113

At the time I joined the firm, the first Huey Newton [Black
Panther leader] trial had just been completed, and Fay Stender
was in that office.

Lage: In the office of Garry, etc.?

Pesonen: Yes, she was one of the associates in the firm, and she was

writing the appeal brief that, in fact, resulted in the reversal
of the first conviction. We were at 345 Market Street. It was
an old building--it is gone now. Owned then by Bechtel who, I
think, had long term plans to build what currently is one of
their main structures in downtown San Francisco. It was a
raggedy, old building and Fay and I shared a little cubicle
space. She was hammering away on her typewriter writing this
brief, and I just handled all kinds of cases. Little probate
matters, little divorce matters.

Lage: How did you get assigned to cases?

Pesonen: The partners would get some old client who would come in who had
some minor matter that had no political or other significance and
they could make a little money on it--fender bender and small
personal injury cases. I didn't get much supervision. They
would just turn them over to me, and if I thought I needed help,
I would wander in on them. There was no training plan.

Lage: Is that unusual?

Pesonen: Well, it is not unusual in small firms. In large firms there is
a very coherent plan for training young associates under the
tutelage of a partner. But that is not the way that firm
operated. It was a sink or swim situation; I either succeeded or
I didn't. I was pretty much on my own. And I liked that. I
liked the freedom and independence of that, but I also had a lot
more freedom to take in cases that an associate in a large firm
wouldn't have. You would have to go through a clearing
committee, and there would be a lot of analysis. I could just
sort of take them on a seat-of-the-pants feeling about them. On
the other hand, they were not big, complicated cases, either. I
went to court, and I tried cases, and it was about that time that
Dan Siegel called me up on the People's Park case we talked about
last time.

They were an interesting, wonderful mix of people. Barney
Dreyfus was a man of just total class. He was a patrician; he
was a gentleman. He was a wonderful writer, and he had a fine,
dry sense of humor and very good judgement about people. He was
the center of that firm. He was the emotional and stabilizing

114

center. Charlie Garry was very volatile and impetuous in some
ways.

Lage: What was Garry's social background?

Pesonen: Garry had grown up in the Central Valley. His name was actually
Garabedian.

Lage: Armenian?

Pesonen: He was Armenian, and Armenians were discriminated against. He

became a tailor in San Francisco and active in one of the unions
--I don't know what union it was — and decided on night law school
at Golden Gate or one of those. He started out in labor law, but
it was more agitating and labor activism than it was law. How he
and Barney got together, I never really heard that story. They
were entirely different kinds of people. Charlie was profane and
loud and impetuous and he couldn't write, could never speak a
sentence in the English language. And Barney was just the
opposite. Barney lived in a big house in Mill Valley and had
four kids, I think, and his wife was quite an elegant woman. She
is still alive, and she is a fine person. But they lived on a
different social level. He and Charlie just had a bond of some
kind that was unbreakable. Barney was a levelling influence on
Charlie . He was the only one I ever saw who could back him down
from one of his more unusual and dangerous positions.

Frank McTernan was another stabilizing influence, although
he was much less prone to intervene in disputes of one kind or
another. His practice was different; he handled a lot of probate
and estate matters. He was very good at it.

Lage: Now how did he get tied in with this more political--?

Pesonen: Well, they all came from an old radical background. They were
part of the Communist Party in the forties and the thirties and
the early fifties. They had all been subpoenaed at one point or
another to testify before the House Un-American Activities
Committee.

Each community in the Bay Area had an old left-wing law
firm. It was Newman, Marsh and Furtado down in the Fremont/
Hayward area; it was Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan and Brotsky in San
Francisco; it was Truehaft, Walker and Bernstein in Oakland.
They all knew each other and they networked and they were social
friends. And their clientele were in the old radical left
community.

Lage: Until the sixties when we saw new action?

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Pesonen: Yes, and then they were kind of passed-by by the times. But they
were successful. They had a steady business. A lot of their
clients were business people who had small businesses of one kind
or another and some of them were quite successful. They tend to
be an educated group of people, and that was their market.

Lage:

Pesonen:

You said Garry was not very articulate,
famous for his court presence?

I thought he was kind of

Lage:

I didn't say he wasn't articulate, I said he couldn't complete a
sentence in the English language. Before a jury or when he
wanted to be persuasive, he was a powerful speaker with a lot of
emotional content, and that was his strength. There was enormous
emotional content; he just believed in what he did and it just
emanated--it came across. That was his gift with juries. I am
not saying he wasn't a good lawyer, that he was stupid; he
wasn't. He was a great man, but he just didn't--. Formal
language was not his gift; emotional content and power were his
gifts.

He also knew his limitations. He knew when he needed to get
assistance on more technical matters. That was just boredom. He
was bored with the technical side of the law. But he loved it.
He had a great memory for principles that had been announced in
cases. He couldn't remember the case names. He would say, "Go
find that case that was cited in 1948 that had to do with such
and such," and you would look around, and you'd find it, and he
was usually right.

There was another lawyer in the firm, Don Kerson, who was a
young lawyer who had worked on the Bodega stuff. He was a very
bright, quiet, somewhat troubled person. That was about it. I
think there was six or seven of us in the firm, and then there
were a few people who came and stayed a little while and left:
Bill Schuler, Bob Meyer. Bill Schuler isn't practicing any
longer, and Bob Meyer is a solo practitioner down on the
Peninsula now. He had come out of the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Bill Schuler had come out of one of the big personal injury
firms.

We had a nice time. We got along well. I never made any
money. I was on a salary. I started out at $750 a month, which
was—you pay a housekeeper that now. But I didn't really care.
I wasn't thinking about money. By two or three years, I was a
partner.

Does that mean a share in the profits of the firm, such as they
are?

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Pesonen: In the losses, too. [laughter] There were some months when we

went without any partners' draw and paid the staff. But it was a
very tight-knit group. They had known each other a long time,
and they were very close. The firm ultimately broke up after
Barney died.

Lage: Which was when?

Pesonen: I don't remember the year that Barney died.

Lage: But was it while you were still with them?

Pesonen: No, no. It was after I had left. It was probably 1982. I think
he died in 1982. He was very prone to skin cancer; he had very
light skin. He always wore a hat and he would get little cancers
on his--. He was very fair. And I think he died of melanoma.

Peripheral Role in Black Panther Defense

Lage: The thing I've heard most about Garry is the defense of the Black
Panthers.

Pesonen: The Black Panther matter—matter is too mild a word for it—was

all going on--. The big invasion of the legislature with guns by
Huey Newton and his crowd had come before I joined the firm. But
that had put them on the front page of the papers and vaulted
them and Charlie into prominence. That was a concerted effort--

Lage: Was Charlie their lawyer from the beginning?

Pesonen: Yes, from his having defended Huey Newton. And he got very

involved in advising the Panthers. Well, there was a concerted
effort by law enforcement to infiltrate the Panthers, and by the
Nixon administration, to do them in. I haven't read all of the
books on it, but I have read about it.

I was not that enamored of the Panthers . I thought they
were a useful social force to wake people up, but I was a little
troubled by all of the weapons. More than a little troubled by
all of that.

Lage: And was Garry not troubled by all of the weapons?
Pesonen: I don't know whether Garry was troubled by it or not.

117

Lage: Did they take him as an advisor well?
advice?

Did they listen to his

Pesonen: Well, you could tell that it was a volatile, fragile

organization. I never liked Huey Newton. 1 thought he was
arrogant and manipulative. But I didn't think he ought to go to
prison, either. Kathleen Cleaver I really liked. She was a
great woman. Eldridge Cleaver I always felt was a nut.

Lage: How involved were you?

Pesonen: They were in and around the office, and they knew who I was. But
I didn't work on Panther cases very much. I didn't have occasion
to. The only Panther cases I worked on involved the federal
grand jury—there was a special grand jury set up to investigate
organized crime, and its real focus was the Panthers. There was
a strike team from the Justice Department in Washington that
would come out periodically and conduct a grand jury proceeding
to see if they could come up with an indictment against some of
them. They called a lot of witnesses and gave them immunity when
they refused to testify.

My role with the Panthers mainly was representing witnesses
who had been called before this grand jury. Particularly two
young women—Shelly Bursey was one of them, and I don't remember
the name of the other, who were Panthers, but they ran the
newspaper, or at least the production end of it. They were
called, and they testified week after week. The grand jury
convened each week the morning after the paper had to get out, so
these young women— they were only in their early twenties or
their late teens- -were exhausted from putting the paper out all
night. They never followed advice. I'd say, "Don't answer any
question in there if you have any doubt about it; come out." I
wasn't allowed in the grand jury room, I had to sit outside in
the hall.

Lage: So you advised them to come outside and confer?

Pesonen: They had a right to ask to come out and talk to their lawyer if
they were uneasy about a question, but they always forgot.

Lage: They didn't have the legal mind?

Pesonen: Sometimes they just didn't know how to — . They weren't very

bright, and they sometimes talked and sometimes said, "I take the
Fifth Amendment." There was no pattern to it. So they were
finally held in contempt by a judge who is on senior status now.
A fine judge, but he really didn't have any choice under the law,
and they were sentenced to jail until they talked. He said they

118

had the key to the jailhouse in their mouths. One of them was
quite pregnant by that time, by David Billiard. In fact, I think
she is now married to Billiard. Ber daughter graduated with Kyle
[Pesonen's son] from Berkeley Bigh.

Lage: This daughter she was pregnant with?

Pesonen: Yes. So there was a big demonstration—a lot of women and
Panther supporters—outside the courtroom when they were
sentenced; we knew it was coming. They were hauled off to the
top floor of the Federal Building in San Francisco. There are a
couple of holding cells up there. The marshals were not used to
this, and they were afraid. They thought this crowd, which had
all come up in the elevators and were banging on the doors , was
going to do something—

Lage: Where were you when all of this was going on?

Pesonen: I went in with my clients to see that they were comfortable in
their cells and to try to keep things calm. So I went out and
talked to the crowd and said that I would ride on the bus with
Shelly—they were particularly worried about Shelly because she
was pregnant--! would go with her to county jail and I would
watch what they did all of the time and go out and visit her when
they transferred her to Santa Rita. That satisfied the crowd
that somebody was looking after them. I talked them out of any
further violence, and the crowd finally dispersed. The Justice
Department lawyers were very impressed. [laughter]

Lage: That you had this kind of power?

Pesonen: I don't know whether I had much power or not, but they--. My
style has not been ever very confrontational. On a personal
level I got along pretty well with these two clowns who would
come out from Washington every week to harass these two women.
They joked about it and said they didn't know I was a bra burner,
and I said, "I'm not." [laughter]

Then it just kind of fizzled after a while. Christmas time
came, and Shelly was still in jail. This must have been 1971 or
so.

It was Judge Zirpoli, Alfonso Zirpoli. I went back to Judge
Zirpoli, and I made a motion to release them since they weren't
going to talk, and they weren't going to stay in jail forever,
and it was not right. And he turned them loose.

I am sure there have been investigative reports of this
Justice Department strike force. The Pratt case is one. I've

119

forgotten Pratt's first name [Geronimo] . He is still in jail,
and the allegations have some merit that he was set up and
framed. I don't know anything about that, I never got to that
level of involvement with the Panthers . What I handled were sort
of peripheral things that didn't require a good trial lawyer,
didn't get involved in policy.

Then I got further and further away from any of the criminal
work and finally just wouldn't do it.

Lage: You didn't do it by choice?

Pesonen: It was pretty much by choice. I didn't like the criminal work; I
didn't like the atmosphere at the Hall of Justice in San
Francisco, and I didn't feel comfortable with it. And I didn't
feel like I was lawyer ing, you know? I mean we would handle an
occasional small criminal matter of one type or another. Some
little Chinese gambling ring busted down in Chinatown for playing
Pai Gow or whatever they did. We had a few like that, but I
didn't consider it my career direction.

Defending Point Arena from a PG&E Nuclear Power Plant, 1972-1973

Lage: Let's talk about some of the cases that you did take on.

Pesonen: I was looking for big things to do. There was always a tension
between me and the rest of the firm over the environmental issue.
I wanted to do environmental law, and they thought that was kind
of a white middle class perspective on the world and didn't
really have to do with justice.

Lage: Did all of them feel that way?

Pesonen: No, Barney was much more sympathetic than Charlie was. They

weren't hostile or antagonistic, but they didn't give me a whole
lot of support either.

The first big opportunity was the Sierra Club hiring me to
handle the Point Arena nuclear power plant. I think I have
talked about that.

Lage: We really haven't talked about it. We referred to it, but not in
any--

Pesonen: I consider that a more elegant victory than the Bodega victory,
but nobody remembers it. Because of my role in Bodega, people

120

came to me all of the time whenever a nuclear power plant was
proposed in California for advice. There was the Davenport
plant; PG&E still had on its drawing boards a lot of nuclear
plants down the coast.

Lage: Where was the Davenport plant?
Pesonen: Just off of Santa Cruz.
Lage: And that was defeated?

Pesonen: Well, it never got off the drawing boards, really, because there
was local protest and there were pretty obvious seismic hazards.

The Svengali of the Antinuclear Power Movement?

Lage: You had also mentioned off the tape that PG&E had come to you
when you were in law school about Rancho Seco?

Pesonen: No, not PG&E. The general manager of SMUD [Sacramento Municipal
Utilities District) .

Lage: What was that?

Pesonen: The general manager and the assistant general manager of SMUD had
called me up and come all the way down from Sacramento to take me
to lunch. We went to lunch at Larry Blake's, and I was all very
flattered about this. I think I was in my first or second year of
law school. Their agenda, it became very clear, was whether I
was going to move in to Sacramento and help organize a campaign
against their nuclear power plant. I had never even thought of
doing that.

Lage: So they really had a vision of you as a kind of the overall
leader of the--?

Pesonen: Svengali. Stop any nuclear power plant. Well, that wasn't my
perspective; I wanted to finish law school. And I didn't think
the Rancho Seco plant was such a bad idea. It was way south of
town, there was no significant population around it, and downwind
was toward the Sierra; there were no communities down there. It
was just flat alkali hardpan ground with scattered Digger pine
trees. It wasn't a very attractive site. It wasn't scenically
useful at all. And it wouldn't use ocean water, it would get its
water from the Folsom South Canal. It wouldn't use very much
water, it would use cooling towers. So, given my view of nuclear

Lage:

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power at that point, it seemed like a pretty good way to go. In
any event, I didn't have time, and I didn't know anybody. I
didn't have an organization; it just wasn't my agenda. And I
told them that and they went away happy. They paid for the
lunch. [chuckles] I never heard from them again, but I never
got involved in that dispute.

After Bodega, PG&E had focused its energies on the north
coast for nuclear power at Point Arena, at a site just north of
the town of Point Arena. Very close to a Coast Guard station; a
Coast Guard Loran station—a navigational outpost. By
coincidence, my cousin, Dan Pesonen, who was in the Coast Guard
at that time, got assigned to this Loran station.

Is that the name of the station, Loran?

Pesonen: L-0-R-A-N. I think that is what it was. It is a navigational
technique.1

He was an electrical technician, and he worked at this
plant. So he became my eyes and ears as to what was going on.
It was right next to the PG&E property. The first thing we did
was start to organize in the town of Mendocino and the town of
Point Arena.

Lage: Now, was this after the Sierra Club took you on, or had you
gotten involved--?

Pesonen: This was when the Sierra Club took me on. I had watched this
through law school. I had seen it developing, and I read the
press accounts. It was clear the PG&E had done a very thorough
job of saturating the community with pronuclear material: comic
books in the schools, and speakers at all of the social clubs. I
followed it, but I just didn't do anything about it—couldn't
afford to.

So I went to the Sierra Club--the Sierra Club, by this time,
was opposed to it, but they didn't have any organization or
organizational approach- -and I proposed that they retain me,
through the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which had just been
set up a year or two earlier. John Hoffman was the executive
director or whatever his title was--it was Jim Moorman at first,
and then it was John Hoffman--! think I started working on it
when Jim Moorman was still heading the organization. I knew it

'Loran (derived from long range navigation) measures the time-of-
arrival difference between two signals transmitted from two geographically
separated ground stations.

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would be a big commitment of time, and so I went to Barney and
said, "This is what I would like to do," and he said, "Sure, as
long as you get paid for it."

Lage: So you were hired as a member of the law firm?

Pesonen: Yes. But they hired me. The firm infrastructure backed me up--I
didn't use any of the people in the law firm. Then I had a long
talk with Julie because I knew what kind of a commitment of time
this would be and I wanted to get her approval. So we went for a
long walk up in Redwood Park and I told her that this was what I
really wanted to do. She gave it her blessing, so then I was on
my way.

The first thing I did was some community organizing. There
were already people who had protested, and I helped them pull
together an organization, but I had no official position in the
organization. I brought [Pierre] Saint-Amand back to take a look
at it, and he flew up in his own plane and took a look at it and
said sure it was a lousy site, and he was going to work on it.

Let's see, how did that develop? That was 1973, I think.
Lage: I have the dates '72- '73.
Pesonen: I may have started on it in '72.

A Seismically Interesting Problem

Pesonen: That was seismically a very interesting problem. The site was
picked because it was on a high marine terrace which supposedly
had been stable for a very long time and had no evidence of any
fracturing through it. Quite apart from Bodega. It was in a
Franciscan formation, not the Bodega granodiorite formation which
also forms Point Reyes. The San Andreas fault doesn't run too
far from that site. It runs inland. The Gualala and Garcia
rivers run in the fault zone; that is why those two rivers run
north south, right parallel to the coastline, and then just as
they get near their mouth within a mile or two of the ocean, they
cut off and discharge into the ocean. So if you look at a map,
these two rivers are lined up like two match sticks in a line and
that is the trace of the San Andreas fault. Then it runs north,
and there is an extension, and then it goes out to sea. It goes
out to sea north of this site that PG&E had selected.

123

I got to looking at the maps and driving around the country
and looking at the geology, and at some point I was given notice
that the Atomic Energy Commission siting regulations on seismic
hazards were being amended. They didn't hold public hearings on
these things; they were technical meetings. The US Geological
Survey was brought in very early to advise the AEC on its new
regulations. And so I was invited to attend some of those
meetings down in Menlo Park —

if

Pesonen: --which I did. At one of the meetings, one of the USGS

geologists took me aside as we were walking back from lunch and
told me that they had found some evidence that the site had been
tilted in recent geologic times. He had done his graduate thesis
on that area, and he had used the technique of using aerial
photos, mainly, to measure the elevation of marine terraces. And
he had found through some technique that he used that the marine
terraces weren't level there.

Well, the ocean is always level. So if the ocean was level,
and the marine terraces that were cut by the ocean in recent
geologic times were not level, that meant that the ground tipped,
not the ocean, which was an enormously interesting fact for that
site, because it said that the site was not free of major seismic
disturbance. And it had been touted by PG&E as a place that was
free of any major seismic disturbances. If there were any
disturbances, they would be on the fault line which was about two
miles away. The plant could be built to withstand shaking, but
it couldn't be built to withstand tilting.

Unfavorable Publicity and PG&E's Swift Abandonment of Point
Arena

Pesonen: I took this information to a reporter on the San Francisco

Chronicle whom I had gotten to know pretty well, and it took him
a long time to understand it.

Lage: Who was this?

Pesonen: His name was Dale Champion, and I think he is retired now. I
worked with Dale to educate him on what this meant for this
plant. It would be the Achilles heel of it; this would kill it.
There still wasn't much publicity on the plant, it was very early
in the process. PG&E had done some trenching up there to check
for fault displacement at the site. Champion finally figured it

124

out and finally understood what I was talking about and did a
very good job. He wrote a long article and had maps prepared and
it hit the front pages of the Chronicle, I think it was December
28th or 29th of 1973. It might have been '74--I would have to go
back and look at the clippings.

It was right in the Christmas holiday season, and it was a
good story. It really laid out in good laymen's language what
had been discovered by this USGS seismologist whom I had met in
these rule-making meetings. When that hit the papers, I heard
through some grapevine, I don't remember where it was, that the
president of PG&E had been called to Washington by the AEC and
that there was a high level meeting. A few weeks later, they
announced that they were dropping plans for that plant.

Lage: It is such a contrast with Bodega.

Pesonen: Well, they knew I was involved, and there was this mystique about
some power I could wield. [laughter] They knew that the facts
were there. I would love the internal memoranda of the USGS or
the Department of the Interior and the Atomic Energy Commission,
but I haven't seen them. We have that article from the Pacific
Historical Review on Bodega. I would love to have him write the
same kind of piece on what happened at Point Arena because I
don't really know what happened.

Lage: Behind the scenes?

Pesonen: I saw it from the outside. But I know what the result was. The
result was a very swift abandonment. So soon that it never had a
chance to build up to being a public issue. I take credit for
that because I was the one who got in early and because of my .
historic role at Bodega I was in a position to find out this
information. I was approached by the geologist because he
figured I could do something about it. He wasn't going to go to
the newspapers. He couldn't do that in his position, but he knew
I could. He was very professional about it. He never was an
advocate. He just said, "Here are some facts that you may find
interesting." I knew enough to know that when somebody in that
kind of position told me that, that it was my responsibility to
do more than just find some interest in it.

So that was the first real environmental action that I took
after I went with the Garry firm. It was successful, and I got a
lot of praise for it, and I got a lot of satisfaction out of it.

Lage: The role of the local organizers and the public doesn't seem to
be great.

125

Pesonen: Those things all fit together. If the proposer of a facility

like that doesn't feel that there is a strong local opposition,
if they figure they can roll over it--. Opposition worries them
and creates a lot of uncertainty and a lot of opportunity for
delay and expense.

Lage: What first interested you in the Point Arena?
Pesonen: Well, it was the "son of Bodega," in a way.
Lage: It was where PG&E moved after Bodega?

Pesonen: It was where they moved after Bodega. It was going to be a lot
bigger plant. It was a two thousand megawatt facility.

Lage: You said you weren't objecting wholeheartedly to nuclear power.

Pesonen: I was real skeptical of nuclear power, particularly in the
seismic coast.

Lage: Were you getting more skeptical as time went on?

Pesonen: Yes.

Lage: You said with Rancho Seco you thought it was okay.

Pesonen: There were just a lot of practical reasons I couldn't get

involved in Rancho Seco. I suppose--. I think probably because
it was a public power facility, I was less inclined. It was not
a scenic site, it didn't use ocean water, it wasn't in a seismic
zone, and it was a public power agency. All of those things
together made me less enthusiastic about taking that one on, plus
my personal circumstances, which was the overriding factor. Now,
here was an opportunity to make a little living, bring some
little revenue into the firm. It wasn't very much; I think it
was twenty five dollars an hour for all of this work, and I
didn't charge for a lot of it--all of the trips up there, I
didn't charge for all of that time.

Lage: Because the work you were doing wasn't really as a lawyer so
much. Did you have some lawyering, also?

Pesonen: Well, I did do some lawyering in that case. Dow Chemical was an
intervener in the AEC license proceedings to oppose the plant
nominally. Their real agenda was to coerce--to get some leverage
on PG&E to require them to wheel power that was generated by Dow
Chemical plants over PG&E lines so they could sell cogeneration
power. I brought a petition on behalf of Dow Chemical that I
filed with the--I think it was still the AEC then—in that

126

licensing proceeding, and it was a petition for Dow Chemical to
be allowed to intervene. It was a nice, elegant piece of legal
work in antitrust law, and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund was
very impressed with it. But most of it was not lawyering.

The Sierra Club, Ike Livermore, and Nuclear Power

Pesonen: There was another element to that case that did involve the

Sierra Club. As part of its political ground laying, PG&E had
approached the Resources Agency under the Reagan administration,
and the secretary for resources then was Norman "Ike" Livermore,
who was a good environmentalist, a liberal Republican, old
California family. His brother, Putnam Livermore, was very
prominent in Republican fund-raising circles. Ike was a close
friend of Ray Sherwin, who was then the president of the Sierra
Club. Now, Ray Sherwin was a superior court judge in Solano
County, and I worked with Ray--there was a lot of work with the
club to get them to let me take the case, a lot of meetings.

Lage: To get them committed to opposing the Point Arena plant?

Pesonen: Yes, and to get some guidelines on what my responsibilities were
because they weren't just hiring a lawyer, they were hiring a
lawyer and an organizer. I wrote a pamphlet which was used as an
organizing tool, which I have sent you, Power at Point Arena
[July 1972, available in The Bancroft Library], I think is the
name of it .

The Department of Fish and Game had agreed not to oppose the
plant before the PUC or the Atomic Energy Commission in exchange
for PG&E paying for a lot of studies of the effect of the plant
on the marine environment. It was a mitigation. And the quid
pro quo for their mitigation was Fish and Game silence. Well, I
thought that was illegal, and I brought suit in San Francisco
superior court against PG&E and the Department of Fish and Game
to invalidate this agreement because I knew there were staff
people in the Department of Fish and Game whom I had talked to
who were very skeptical of this plant but were under a gag order.

Lage: This agreement was up front? Acknowledged?

Pesonen: Well, it hadn't been publicized and it hadn't been published

anyplace, but I found out about it and got my hands on a copy and
brought this action in the superior court. We were on our way
into the courthouse to have a hearing on this petition when PG&E
decided they would abandon the agreement with Fish and Game.

127

While that was pending, Ray Sherwin had lunch with Ike
Livermore and had just agreed without talking to me that we
wouldn't try to invalidate this agreement, we would get some
other benefit out of them. I was furious. I felt they just
yanked the rug out from under me on an approach that had
political and legal significance. So I told Ray, "If you are
going to do this, I can't represent the club. I've got to do
something else because I can't have my clients going off and
making cozy little side deals that undercut my lawsuits." And he
apologized and agreed that it was wrong and called Ike and said
he couldn't keep his word on that one. And it was all fine. We
had lunch down here at what is now Skates, but it used to be
another restaurant down there on the Berkeley waterfront. Ray
drove all the way down from court in Fairfield. So that problem
got taken care of.

There were little anecdotes like that that sprinkled through
this Point Arena case.

Lage: Now, Ike Livermore tells in his oral history a little anecdote,
quite fondly, actually, recalling that he picked up the papers
one day, and David Pesonen had said, "Ike Livermore ought to be
sent to jail!" [laughter] Do you remember this?

Pesonen: No, I don't remember it.

Lage: He seemed to think it was amusing.

Pesonen: You know, we are pretty good friends, we've been on some pack
trips in the high Sierra together.

Lage: He indicated that, but--

Pesonen: Well, I might have said something like that--

Lage: It had to do with the site selection committee--the way that the
state worked with PG&E to select sites. And he even agreed that
probably that was outdated, outmoded. But he had participated in
it, and I guess a site was selected; the state signed on to the
Point Arena site.

Pesonen: I think it did, yes.
Game.

That is why the deal was done with Fish and

Well, I don't remember saying that, but I could have. A
little hyperbole never hurts, if you want ink. I certainly
wanted ink on that case. You need it. Probably other things
will occur to me about Point Arena, but I don't remember what
they are now.

128

Lage: Did you work very much with other Sierra Club entities on this?

Pesonen: Well, I worked with the club's publications people putting that
pamphlet together.

Lage: Any local environmentalists or anything like that? The pamphlet
acknowledges "the assistance of volunteer members of the energy
subcommittee, Northern California Regional Conservation
Committee. "

Pesonen: Yes. That was a volunteer group. There was a young woman who

headed it up named Joanne--! don't remember her last name now, I
haven't seen her for years. They were kind of an advisory group.
But I pretty much ran it.

Lage: You ran the show; they didn't direct it?

Pesonen: They didn't direct it, I directed it. You can't have committees
run these things, you have got to have a leader, and a leader who
has some confidence about his judgment. I knew I had this
mystique about me from Bodega, and I knew that I had a certain
amount of clarity of what the strategy should be, and I would
call on them for help in implementing the strategy and for
advice, and we would brainstorm together, but once decisions were
made, I put the--

Lage: Did you notice during the Point Arena campaign changes in
attitudes toward nuclear power in general, since Bodega?

Pesonen: Well, by this time there was a lot of skepticism about nuclear
power. It had really changed dramatically.

Lage: And the club itself had changed. It hadn't been too many years
before when they had the big fight over Diablo.

Pesonen: Well, the big fight over Diablo started before that, in the club,
that's true. The big public fight over Diablo started later.
The internal club dispute over the deal that was struck (that's
maybe too harsh a term), over the agreement [in 1966] that the
club would not oppose Diablo in exchange for PG&E moving from the
Nipomo Dunes, had occurred within the club and caused the rift
which led to David Brewer's departure [1969). But I was not very
much involved in that. First of all, I didn't want to get
involved in an internal club dispute; I didn't see any point in
that. There was nothing that I could add to that that would be
constructive, so I stayed out of that controversy pretty much. I
watched it with a lot of interest, but I had no role to play.

Lage:

It was complicated enough.

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Pesonen: It was complicated, and it was full of politics that I wasn't

part of. I have never been much of a joiner. I had never been
an officer in the Sierra Club; I wasn't anything but a member,
paying dues, pretty much. But as a public controversy, Diablo
construction hadn't even started yet. All of those problems with
the switched plans and the Hosgri fault discovery; that all came
later.

Lage: Did you get involved in that later battle at Diablo at all?

Pesonen: Not very much. I went down and talked to a group down there once
during the Prop. 15 campaign, and I had a very interesting time
when I was director of forestry with Diablo. It is a wonderful
story.

But anyway, that is Point Arena in a nutshell.

Defending Public Access to Beaches

Lage: Well, it seems like a story you could tell in a nutshell—it is
cleaner.

Pesonen: Yes, it was clean and I picked all of the meat out of it.

The next case I handled, right about the same time, for the
Legal Defense Fund, involved public access to some beaches in
Humboldt county, north of Petrolia. There was a retired
gentleman up there, who heated his house with driftwood that he
collected off the beaches in his old jeep, and there was a
rancher up there named Zanoni, who owned a beautiful piece of
land north of Petrolia where the little coastal road runs right
along the beach for ten or fifteen miles.

He one day closed the fence off after this fellow had driven
through, and then threatened him with a shotgun and said he
couldn't go to the beach. Well, by this time Gion-Dietz had been
decided and the Gion-Dietz doctrine had been established in
California that the public had an absolute right to the public
trust lands to mean high tide.

Lage: Now, when was that decided?

Pesonen: That was decided in the sixties sometime, late sixties or early
seventies. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund came to me and
asked me if I would like to handle this case, and I did. And
again it was another one of these things at twenty- five dollars

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Lage:

Pesonen:

an hour, but it did bring in a little money; I could justify it
to the firm.

That was a very interesting case. I filed suit against this
rancher that he was illegally barring the public from crossing
his land to get to the public land on the beach. He hired an
old, very well-known lawyer in Eureka who went by the nickname
"Moose". He still has an office right across the street from
that big old wonderful Victorian building, the Ingomar Club.
This case sort of kicked around in the Humboldt County Superior
Court for a while, and we couldn't seem to get it off the ground;
we took some depositions. I didn't have a lot of time to spend
on it, but finally I got to the point where I proposed that we
settle it with some easements — recorded easements across this
land—but we didn't know who to grant the easements to. We
couldn't grant them to the Sierra Club, so I brought the state
attorney general's office in, persuaded them to come into the
case and be the recipient on behalf of the people of the state of
the grant of the easements. So we laid out five easements and
got them surveyed and Zanoni signed the deeds, we dismissed the
case and we all went away happy.

I was up there a couple of weeks ago, and I presume the
easements are still there, but there are no signs; there is
nothing to tell the public that they can get out of their car and
walk across these little strips of land to the beach.

That's too bad.
of all of that.

I thought the coastal commission had taken care

Well, nobody did anything about it, I guess. I probably ought to
write to them and suggest they let the public know they own a
little piece of that land up there. That was fun.

The Widener Case; Another Encounter with PG&E

Pesonen: Then, because of all of my notoriety, one day this guy walks into
the office named Don Widener. Widener laid out a story that just
lit my eyes up. His case had languished. He had been a
television producer for KNBC, the flagship station for NBC
[National Broadcasting Corporation] in Los Angeles. He had
started out as a little publicity writer. He had a brash,
aggressive personality and fine eyes for muckraking, and was not
shy about going out and trying to do things. He had talked his
boss into letting him take a crew and do a little documentary on
pollution in Tijuana. Tijuana Brass was the name of the film; it

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was just a short. And it got an Emmy, or it got a big award, so
he was given some more resources, and he preempted a role for
himself in NBC as a documentary producer. He had no training or
background, but he could do it. He befriended movie stars to
narrate these things and brought in a lot of audience for that
station. Ed Asner narrated one of his films. And then he hooked
up with Jack Lemmon, who was a superstar.

Jack Lemmon and he did a film on ocean pollution that got a
bunch of awards , and then he and Lemmon put together the film
called Powers That Be, which was about nuclear power. It was the
first feature-length documentary, that I know of, done by a major
media source on the nuclear power controversy as it was bubbling
across the country.

Lage: When would this have been?

Pesonen: The film was produced in '72, I think. In the film, Widener had
read in a Look magazine article that there were problems with the
Humboldt nuclear plant: that it was leaking radio- iodine, that
the fuel elements were cracking. The material that they had
originally used was either stainless steel or a zirconium alloy,
and it would become embrittled in the high intensity neutron
environment in the core. Radio-iodine is one of the by-products
of fission, and there were rumors and reports of airborne
contamination of radio-iodine. Widener called the company and
made arrangements to interview a spokesperson at the plant. They
were right in the control room, kept all the atmosphere. And he
interviewed the engineer who had had a management responsibility
before that plant, his name was James Carroll. In preparing for
the interview, they talked a while outside, and then they went
into this control room and Widener hit with the question and
said, "Mr. Carroll, there have been reports of problems with the
fuel elements in this plant. Can you comment on that?" Carroll
looked right into the camera and said, "That is too long of a
question. I don't think we can answer it."

Widener took that little snippet of film and used it to
introduce his whole documentary. After this shot of Carroll
saying, "Too long a question, I don't think we can answer it,"
the film cuts to Jack Lemmon who raises one eyebrow and says,
"Long questions, short answers. The main questions about nuclear
power are accidents, waste, radioactivity." It was clearly a
commentary intended to show Carroll, and PG&E by implication, as
being evasive.

Carroll heard about it at a conference in Chicago from
somebody who had seen the finished film broadcast at prime time
in Los Angeles and told him he looked very bad and looked

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evasive. Carroll—this is my theory, anyway--at that point in
his career saw that he was rising into the executive levels of
the company and had volunteered to be the spokesperson for the
company in this interview. He was very upset and elected to
write a letter of complaint to NBC which turned out to be a far
bigger mistake than anything ever said on the film. He accused
Widener of having secretly taped, off camera, a conversation in
which Carroll had said these words, and then having dubbed the
sound track into Carroll's visual, camera appearance. Carroll
denied having said those words on camera.

Lage: He accused him of not having had that on camera?

Pesonen: Yes. That would have been a very unethical thing to do. My
theory was, and I've never had it destroyed- -never had it
questioned, really—that Carroll submitted a draft of this letter
to the public relations department of NBC, and they were worried
about the Widener film. They still had plans to build a lot of
nuclear power plants, and the prospect of a major network program
with Jack Lemmon as the narrator getting national attention just
when the nuclear industry was taking off was something of grave
concern to the public relations department. So they approved
this letter and helped him edit it. It went through four or five
iterations.

Widener said it was not true, it couldn't have happened, it
has just destroyed my career- -he never got any more work with NBC
after that. He was broke, living out of a suitcase. He was
libeled; he was defamed by that, because the letter was sent to
everybody who could in any way bring pressure on NBC. It was
sent to the congressional committee that was overseeing
journalistic ethics at that time because there were complaints
about journalistic coverage of the Vietnam war. Spiro Agnew was
vice president then; you remember he was taking after CBS
[Columbia Broadcasting System] . The president of CBS had been
subpoenaed before Congress about the way its reporters were
reporting. They supposedly had dubbed some words of General
Westmoreland when he was in Vietnam. On and on and on. The
media were very worried that--. I mean, I can remember all of
that controversy going on back, twenty years ago. The Nixon
administration had a concerted strategy to suppress full coverage
of what was happening in Vietnam.

The Carroll letter came along right in the midst of this
sensitivity and worry and concern on the part of the major media.
And they are not courageous. These big networks are not
courageous; they are a business. The days of Edward R. Murrow
are gone. That kind of investigative reporting is seldom done.
60 Minutes is more of a People magazine tabloid than it is

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investigative reporting anymore,
my opinion, now.

**

with some exceptions. That is

Pesonen: Copies of the letter were sent to the manager of the NBC station
for whom Widener had worked. They were sent to one of the big
brokers of advertising accounts in New York. It was clearly a
concerted campaign. Copies were sent to the Washington lobbyists
for PG&E.

Well, I didn't know all of that when Widener first walked
in. I saw the letter, and I saw how damaging it was to Widener 's
career. Widener had hired a lawyer in Los Angeles who became a
judge and had to abandon working on the case, and the case was
about to be dismissed for lack of prosecution, and he was
worried. He knew it was about to be dismissed. PG&E had had it
transferred to San Francisco on a change of venue motion of some
kind that they had won. So it was just languishing over in the
superior court in San Francisco. Widener had gone to four or
five lawyers and they had said, "Well, you have got an
interesting case," but they didn't want to take it.

Lage: He probably couldn't even offer the twenty- five dollars an hour.

Pesonen: He couldn't offer any money. He was looking for a lawyer who

would take it on a straight contingency, and nobody was willing
to do it. But I saw more than just the lawsuit in this. I saw
this as a vehicle for a lot of things that I cared about. So I
said I would take the case, but it was subject to approval from
the partners of the firm.

A Libel Case in the Interests of Free Speech

Pesonen: I went to Barney and Charlie and Frank, and they were skeptical
of it. I had a copy of the film and I showed them the film.

Lage: Now, why were they skeptical?

Pesonen: Well, libel is not a favored area of the law, because it is

intended to suppress speech. I saw a great irony in this. Here
was a libel case, which has usually been seen as a way of
shutting people up, sanctioning them for speaking too freely and
too vividly and untruthfully sometimes — sometimes you skirt the
truth when you get excited. As the Supreme Court said in the New
York Times case, speech should be robust and wide open. So they

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were--. And libel suits historically had often been a tool of
repression. So they were philosophically uneasy with a libel
suit. I said here was a great irony: here was a libel used to
suppress speech. I knew of no case, historically, where it had
been used for the opposite effect, where a libel suit had been
used to promote free speech. So I was very intrigued with it
just as a philosophical matter, as a legal matter, and as a
political matter.

They finally agreed that I could take the case if I could
raise twenty- five thousand dollars as a fund for costs. Widener
didn't have that, so we went to the antinuclear community,
nationwide. Barney had some connections, the publisher of
Scientific American, and I went to some other people who may not
want their names used, but I suppose it doesn't make any
difference. Henry Kendall, who had been one of the founders of
the Union of Concerned Scientists in Massachusetts, who was an
MIT professor of physics, and who recently won the Nobel Prize,
was a friend of mine and he put up some money- -he also had a lot
of independent family wealth.

Lage: Was he a friend through your inquiries into nuclear power?

Pesonen: Yes. By that time we already had the first meeting at his house
that led to Proposition 15. So he was a good ally and colleague
in the antinuclear-power movement. He put up some money, and we
got money from three or four other sources, mostly through
Barney's efforts, and when the twenty- five thousand was in the
bank, I told Widener, "Okay, we'll go with it."

The first thing I did was move to get it back on the trial
scheduling calendar and get some more time on it and defeat the
pending motion from PG&E to dismiss it for lack of prosecution.
So I got it back on track, procedurally, in the court. Then I
noticed Carroll's deposition, and I took Carroll's deposition in
my office, and I requested that he bring all papers that he had.
That company is so arrogant, or was at that time, that they
didn't look at Carroll's file.

Lage: They just sent it along?

Pesonen: He just walked in with it; he walked in carrying this little

manila folder. And we sat down at a table and started. There
were two lawyers representing him, one for PG&E and one for him
personally. I said, "Did you bring some papers with you?" and he
said, "Yes," and hands over this little file. I started going
through it and here were all kinds of smoking guns. Here were
the notes from the Washington lobbyist for PG&E saying that he
had talked with the staff of the house committee which was

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involved in media ethics at that point — I don't remember the name
of the committee--and said, "He tells us we are all wet--they
investigated this—but the fact that NBC is scared is just what
we wanted." All kinds of stuff like that.

Lage: It is kind of amazing that they--

Pesonen: And all of the iterations of this letter, from the first draft
that Carroll had drafted on his kitchen table, to the final
version that went out to all of these high mucky-mucks. The file
was full of revelations. And the two lawyers for PG&E and
Carroll began to figure out that they made a terrible mistake. I
just walked out of the room with the folder and went down the
hall and copied it all and then gave it back to him. Any good
corporate lawyer would have sanitized that file.

Lage: And then could you have subpoenaed for more?

Pesonen: It might not have been an ethical thing to do, but I never would
have found out about it, and I never would have done anything
about it. Sure, I could have subpoenaed that record, but by the
time I had done it, it would have disappeared. So that was a
very expensive mistake. And very bad lawyering on their part.

Well, I had what I needed. I pretty much had the proof by
that point that there was a malicious intent, there was knowledge
of falsity, and there was falsity, and there was some sense that
Widener had been damaged. Whether Widener really was damaged was
the weak point in the case which the PG&E lawyer and Carroll's
lawyer never figured out.

Lage: They never attacked that?

Pesonen: No. Because I think Widener was such a brash, impossible person
who always went over budget, that NBC wouldn't have hired him
again anyway. I don't know that for a fact.

Lage: But they hired him for so many before that.

Pesonen: Yes, but this was the third of a contract — of three that he was
contracted to do. I have no evidence that they would have gone
into a new contract with him. I suspect that they wouldn't have.
He was a thorn in their side. He was an agitator. A very good
agitator, but he didn't fit with the corporate system. His
expense accounts never added up. When he got his eye on a film,
he just spent money, to hire airplanes, fly crews all over the
world, and do whatever needed to be done to make it a good film.
That just didn't sit well with corporate management. I think
they were going to let that contract run out and not use him

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again. Although they might not have fired him, they might have
given him a lower level job in the operation. But PG&E never
figured out that they could weaken this case by showing that
Widener wasn't really damaged even though it was a libel.

A Corrupt Judge, a Sympathetic Jury, a Final Settlement

Pesonen: So we took it to trial finally, in superior court, and it was

about a six-week jury trial. Unfortunately, it was heard before
a judge who had come back from semiretirement, Byron Arnold, a
corrupt, old, former member of the board of supervisors, old-line
San Francisco--a lot of business connections. And Arnold was
hostile from day one. I should have challenged him and not had
it go to him, but I was too naive and young, and I thought he
would at least follow the law. It became clear to him as the
trial progressed that I was going to win, and I was going to win
big. He tried to dismiss the case before it got to the jury, and
I brought in an expert on libel law from Hastings, an old guy who
had just written a book on it, Laurence H. Eldredge, who was
about Arnold's age, and he looked a lot like Byron Arnold. He
had just published a textbook, The Law of Defamation. He came
and argued it with me, and Arnold decided to let the case get to
the jury.

The jury came back after deliberating about a day with a
unanimous verdict of $750,000 compensatory damages for Widener
and $7 million in punitive damages. It was the biggest verdict
ever for an individual plaintiff in the history of the common
law, up to that time.

Lage: What did you ask for?

Pesonen: I asked for about that. I said a million in compensation for
harm to Widener 's professional reputation and $7 million in
punitive damages. They didn't give me quite the million. I
hadn't put in much evidence on damages. I had Jack Lemmon
testifying that Widener was one of the finest documentary
producers he had ever seen and had a high reputation in the film
community, all of which was pretty shaky. And I think the jury
saw that Widener--. But they liked Widener, and they liked his
wife, who sat in the courtroom throughout the proceedings and
testified a little bit.

There was just a flurry of dismay in the room at the
verdict. Arnold got up off the bench and walked out of the
courtroom without saying a word to anybody after that verdict.

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don't think he even said, "Thank you" to the jury. He was
plainly emotionally upset. And of course PG&E immediately
brought a motion for a new trial and to overturn the verdict, and
Arnold granted them all. He granted judgment for PG&E against
Widener--they had a cross-complaint that he had maliciously
prosecuted this case against Carroll and that he had libeled
Carroll. It was a frivolous strategy. But PG&E went out of
there after Arnold got through with it with a clean sweep. I
took it up to the court of appeal and--

Lage: So you ended up having to appeal it when you had won?

Pesonen: I had to appeal. I had to appeal to get the right to try it
again.

Lage: I don't understand how the jury can make a decision and then the
judge can overturn it.

Pesonen: Under rare circumstances, if the judge thinks that jury has just
run away and ignored the law, he can overturn their verdict. It
is supposed to be a very narrow standard set up for the rare case
when something goes awry, but it is very hard to control that if
you've got a corrupt judge. And he hadn't followed the right
standards, so when he granted judgment for PG&E, that was
reversed, but the standard on a new trial is a broader standard;
more flexible. And the court affirmed the new trial order so it
was sent back for a new trial.

By this time, PG&E had wised up, and they hired a very good
lawyer, Ed [Edwin] Heafey, Jr., who had written the book on trial
practices for CEB [Continuing Education of the Bar] . We spent a
lot of time trying to get that case to trial again. He took
depositions all over Hollywood and all over Los Angeles, from
anybody in the film community about Widener's reputation. He
spotted the weakness in the case, which was Widener's damages.
We finally got sent back to trial before Judge Eugene Lynch, who
is now on the federal court, and Lynch said that we ought to try
to settle this case. We spent about a week on various motions
and settlement discussions and finally settled it for $500,000,
which was still a lot of money.

Lage: Yes. Not seven million, but--

Pesonen: But it is not seven million. But if I had tried that case before
a different judge at that time, I would be a wealthy man today,
because I had it on a 40 percent contingency.

Lage:

Was the $500,000 punitive damages?

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Pesonen: No, we didn't characterize it one way or another. It was

supposed to be confidential, more or less. Fifteen years ago, I
don't think anybody cares now. So that is the end of the Widener
saga. Well, not quite the end.

Lage: This must have endeared you even more to PG&E.

Pesonen: Yes. Well, Widener immediately went out and bought a new Lincoln
Continental [laughter], and then he bought a big house up in Lake
Arrowhead, and then he lost it all. I've lost touch with him;
I've tried to track him down. I am told he is sort of living
hand-to-mouth from one motel room to another, but he was always
in Jack Lemmon's office all of the time. Jack Lemmon's secretary
and I got to know each other, and she's lost track of him; she
doesn't know where he is now.

Lage: He never got back into the documentary film business?

Pesonen: No. I don't know what he did after that. He didn't do much. I
had dinner with him once at Lake Arrowhead about 1980 or so, but
I understand he has lost all of that.

He did do me one favor. In 1983--I think it was the fall of
1983--when I was gearing up to run for reelection as a judge,
Senator [John A.] Nejedly threw a big party for me at his hilltop
place out in Walnut Creek, and Don Widener got Jack Lemmon to fly
up and speak at it. That was pretty nice. I think I am not
remembered for any judicial act I did in Contra Costa County in
the two years that I was a judge out there as much as I am
remembered as the guy that got Jack Lemmon to come to Contra
Costa. [laughter]

Defense of Mount Sutro and the City of Davis

Lage:

Pesonen:

Any other cases we should talk about before we get into the
nuclear safeguards initiative? We have the Mount Sutro Defense
Committee v. Regents of the University of California.

Yes, that was a good case,
pretty good case.

and the City of Davis case was a

The Mount Sutro Defense Committee case came along right
about the same time as the Widener case, and it involved the
plans of the University's medical center to expand enormously in
San Francisco: to add a whole new wing to the Moffitt Hospital,
to build a whole new dental school. It is in a very compacted

139

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

area, near Golden Gate Park in the Haight-Ashbury part of San
Francisco, and the community was up in arms about the impact of
congestion.

I filed an action under the California Environmental Quality
Act to enjoin the whole project because it was not consistent
with the long range development plan of the University or CEQA.
I tried that before Ira Brown. The University was represented by
the general counsel for the regents and the firm of, it was then
Howard, Prim, Rice & Nemerovski. Stewart Pollock handled the
case; he is now a superior court judge in San Francisco. I tried
it on a novel theory that I don't think Stewart figured out until
we were near the end of trial. Lo and behold, a week after the
Widener verdict, Judge Brown issues his decision granting the
injunction and stopping the whole construction plan out there at
the University. So within a week I had these two front-page
stories of legal triumphs.

Well, the University appealed immediately and brought a
special kind of petition, a petition of a writ of certiorari, I
think, which is very odd, or a writ of quorum nobis. I don't
remember what the writ was. It was an unusual writ, and they
finally prevailed in the court of appeal, and by this time the
University had modified its design plans and modified the design
of the dental school so that it sloped into the hill and did some
visual cosmetics on this thing. But I met a lot of people in
that case, and I represented a lot of community organizations and
had quite a following in San Francisco. That is why I was going
to be a superior court judge in San Francisco, because I had
political support.

Instead of Contra Costa?

That is a whole other story,
County.

how I ended up in Contra Costa

In a nutshell, that is what that case was about.

But there is something to the unusual approach you used? You
said you had used a certain theory that the other lawyer didn't
catch onto.

Pesonen: Yes, it was the theory that they had to do their environmental
impact statement before they went to the legislature for their
budget appropriation, and I persuaded Judge Brown that I was
right. If I was right, it would have brought this state to a
halt. [laughter]

Lage:

I love your comments after the fact.

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Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Knowing a little more about how government works now, it just
would have been unworkable. The legislature would have amended
the statute if the courts had interpreted it the way I thought it
should be interpreted. But the language supported my
interpretation, and the evidence, as it went in, was consistent
with it.

The City of Davis case involved an overpass called the
Kidwell Road overpass which was to connect two tomato fields on
both sides of Interstate 80, when Interstate 80 was being
completed from the Dixon Road turnoff into the city of Davis,
where Highway 113 takes off and goes north, the major
reconstruction of that highway. The Solano County development
department had proposed to Caltrans that they build this
overpass, and they had promoted it as an industrial site; that
people could work at this industrial site and live in Davis,
which had good schools, good libraries, and a fine ambiance. But
all of the taxes would go to Solano County, and all of the burden
would fall on the City of Davis and Yolo County. There is a
county line running right down Putah Creek, just a couple of
hundred yards beyond this overpass.

The Federal Highway Administration came in and opposed me,
and Caltrans opposed me, and the contractor hired a big lawyer to
oppose me, and I brought a suit in the federal court in
Sacramento in front of Judge Wilkins. I tried it by myself and,
to my surprise, Judge Wilkins issued an injunction, a temporary
injunction. Construction was underway; they had piled the dirt
up, and pile drivers were out there for the center piers. When
the court issued that decision, I remember stopping by and
talking with the project manager and I said, "Sorry, the court
just told you you have got to quit." He wasn't too happy about
it.

After six or eight months, they issued a revised
environmental statement, and the judge dissolved the injunction,
and so I brought a petition in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
to reinstate the injunction and immediately they did so. They
issued an injunction, reinstated the order until further
proceedings. Well, there were no further proceedings until a
full environmental impact had been done. Well, they never did
one.

Was that the grounds that you had?
had not been--?

That the environmental impact

There had to be a full environmental impact statement. I showed
that their intention was to build this industrial facility and
that has a major environmental impact, and they had ignored it in

141

their environmental statements. It was part of a scheme by the
adjoining county to rip off the other county. That was why the
City of Davis was my client. They saw what was happening: they
were going to get a bigger demand on their public services and no
way to pay for it .

I charged $5,000 for that case; that is all I ever got. I
think all I ever got was $2,000 for the Mount Sutro case. I was
a lousy businessman. [laughter]

Lage: So you charged just a flat fee on those?

Pesonen: I charged a flat fee.

Lage: How did the City of Davis happen to come to you?

Pesonen: A city councilman was somebody I had met through the antinuclear
movement, Bob Black, who later went on to the board of
supervisors in Yolo County. I guess I told him I could do a good
job, and I did. But I didn't make any money on that case. I
didn't make any money on any of these cases, just a little bit on
the Widener case.

Only recently, only within the last couple of months, has
something happened. I am not involved in it any more, but they
have apparently satisfied the City of Davis or somebody that
their environmental documents are okay, so after seventeen years,
they are finally building the Kidwell Road interchange, which
doesn't go to anyplace.

Lage: There will probably be a new factory outlet center or something.
Pesonen: There will probably be a new factory outlet there, sure.
Lage: What was "in the matter of PG&E" at Humboldt?

Pesonen: Well, starting in about 1975 or '76, there was a Forest Service

geologist up in Eureka who discovered that there was some serious
faulting in the vicinity of the Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant,
which had always been erratic in its operation anyway.

Lage: And it was an early one?

Pesonen: It was the first real commercial sized plant — sixty megawatts, I
think. It was not a very big plant, but it was an operating
nuclear power plant, and it was very valuable public relations,
and it did produce electricity. They probably never made any
money on it. It was an old General Electric pressure-suppression
safety device, a very primitive design from a safety point of

142

Lage:

Pesonen:

view. On the other hand, it wasn't very big, so it would be less
likely to melt down. But it was a hazard, so we brought a
petition before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission--! think that
is what it was called then. That agency has gone through a
couple of modifications; the AEC was abolished in "74- '75 and its
regulatory role was split off from its promotional role, and then
there was another change and I have sort of lost track of what
they all were, but we brought the petition before whoever had the
licensing authority over the operation--to shut it down, because
of this newly discovered evidence of seismic hazards. That
kicked around for quite a while and finally they shut them down
in 1979.

So this wasn't a law case?
administrative?

I mean, in legal court. It was an

It was an administrative petition. I didn't see that quite to
the end because I got appointed director of forestry before it
was over. It was over in late "79, and I got appointed in April
of '79 to the Department of Forestry.

The Disturbing Saga of Charles Garry and the People's Temple

Lage: Before we go on to the Department of Forestry and the Board of
Forestry, let's talk a little more about the Garry firm and the
People's Temple connection.

Pesonen: Well, as the years went by, Charlie Garry—from his celebrity
around his involvement with the Panthers and his successful
defense of Huey Newton on the retrial after the court of appeals
reversed the first conviction—became, I thought, pretty much
enamored of his public image. Hungry for publicity, his judgment
began to deteriorate, in my opinion.

Lage: How old was he by this time?

Pesonen: Oh, he was in his sixties. He wasn't bringing in much business.
I was trying to bring in some business and pay my way and help
pay the overhead; I was never a big rainmaker with big money-
making cases. Al Brotsky was the real businessman in the office,
and Barney, because of his reputation, brought in a lot of
business, and Frank McTernan had a steady clientele, but Charlie
began to be kind of a drag. He would get some criminal case from
a drug dealer, who would give him five thousand in cash and he'd
come down to us and say, "Here, I got this money." You could

143

tell he was feeling a little defensive about it himself. He'd
have rolls of bills stashed in the light fixtures.

I began to get pretty troubled about it. But I didn't do
anything about it. I had been with the firm eight or nine years,
and it wasn't that bad.

Lage: Are you pretty independent in a situation like that?

Pesonen: Yes, we all had kind of our own individual practices. It was not
a cohesive business. We managed all our business together, but
we didn't make decisions collectively very much; we had our own
sets of clients and our own kinds of cases that we handled, and
we would refer cases back and forth among ourselves in the firm
depending on the expertise of the various lawyers.

It began to really trouble me when Charlie represented some
guy who was involved in drugs and couldn't pay his fees, so he
gave Charlie his Jaguar as the fee. Charlie just took the
Jaguar. It was an asset that he just took for himself; we didn't
collectively get the benefit of it. And he started to do things
like that. It's not good business and not fair to the rest of
us, we felt--I felt that probably more strongly than anybody else
because I could see that I was never going to make very much
money in that firm, and I was getting old enough that I was
beginning to worry that I had kids now who might one day go to
college--

Pesonen: I was not making a lot of money, and I never expected to make a
lot of money when I started there, but you change as you get
older and you get responsibilities. So I just didn't see that
there was any future for me there, but I didn't know what else to
do. So the thought kind of nagged at me, and I put it out of my
mind.

First Suspicion of Evil in the Temple

Pesonen: I knew Charlie was involved with the People's Temple. The

People's Temple was politically very celebrated in the city.
This guy Jim Jones could turn out precinct workers by the
hundreds for any local candidate for the board of supervisors,

Lage: He was really relied on by a lot of the establishment.

144

Pesonen: He was relied on by the liberal establishment. He had a lot of
charisma, and he had a loyal following, and it seemed as though
he was doing good things. He was a minister who talked the right
line. And, of course, Charlie got involved with him immediately,
because Jim Jones was always in the newspapers, and Charlie
wanted to be in the newspapers. But I really didn't have much to
do with it.

Lage:

So one day Charlie came to me and said that he would like me
to handle some libel cases involving the People's Temple because
I was the libel expert, from the Widener case. They were cases
involving the parents of children who were—by this time the
temple had moved to Guyana. Jim Jones had gone to Guyana, and
there had been some articles appearing that things were not what
they appeared with Jim Jones, that he coerced and sexually abused
his followers. But it was all kind of hazy and full of
unsubstantiated charges. It didn't look good, but there wasn't
any proof. I discounted a lot of that; I figured it was just
reactionary press going after somebody that was a progressive.
But there was this sort of nagging question unresolved.

When Charlie brought these four or five libel suits for me
to handle, to defend the temple--

They charged the parents with being--?

Pesonen: The parents had accused Jones of abusing their children and

holding their children against their will. These were parents
who had joined the temple when it was here, and when the temple
picked up over night and moved everything to Guyana, some of
these kids--some of them were little, they were ten, seven years
old, little kids. The parents, by this time, had become
disenchanted with the temple and had not gone, and they as much
as accused Jones of kidnaping their children. Or they were
people who had gone down to Guyana, to the encampment there, and
then become disenchanted and left and were not sure, or came back
for personal reasons and left their children there because they
still believed in it. There were a lot of different reasons why
the parents were separated from the children, and the parents
were implicated in those decisions. It wasn't as though the kids
were kidnaped and spirited away in the middle of the night.

But the disenchantment had grown, and the parents had then
accused Jones of holding the children against their will and
against the parents' will and cutting them off from access; they
couldn't get into this remote encampment back in the jungle. You
needed a little airstrip to get there and then you had to ride
through the jungle in one of the temple's vehicles. If you
didn't have those arrangements, you just couldn't get in; you had

145

to have permission. Jones would get on his shortwave radio and
accuse the parents of having molested the children and that was
why the children wanted to stay. They didn't want to go back to
these abusive parents. It was a real mess.

So the parents had brought libel suits against Jones for
accusing them of this horrendous behavior toward their children
by shortwave radio, and Jones, in turn, cross-complained (or
Charlie wanted us to cross-complain) against the parents. One of
these cases was filed in Los Angeles, and I went down to defend
some motion on it. I took all of these papers and read all of
these complaints and many of them were done in propria persona --
the parents didn't have lawyers—and so they weren't very
artfully drawn. Good pleading pleads what are called ultimate
facts. Sloppy pleading pleads a lot of facts which are not
necessary in the pleading. They may be necessary in the evidence
at trial, but not in the pleadings. And there were affidavits
attached to the complaints. They were very factual and very
troubling. I didn't know where the truth was. People always
exaggerate in pleadings to some extent. Until they are tested by
a trial, you don't know what the truth is.

I came back and I went in to see Charlie, and I said,
"Charlie, there is an awful lot of stuff in here that really
troubles me, and it can't all be fabricated, and I don't want to
work on these cases; I don't think we ought to be involved in
them. There is too much smoke here; there is something very evil
going on down there. I feel it is very possible that there is
something very evil about this place. No matter what the
ideology, I don't think we should have anything to do with it."
Charlie just exploded at me. He said, "It's paradise, I tell
you. It's paradise. I've been down there. They sing and they
dance and they have gardens. It is a pure socialist world. It
is the dream we've all had. Everybody shares. They all live in
barracks. They love each other; they sing and dance a lot."

Lage: He was really taken in by it?

Pesonen: He was completely taken in. I said, "Well, Charlie, I don't

know. I have not been there, but I have read all of this stuff,
and I do not want to work on it. Get somebody else." So that
was the beginning of the real falling out between Charlie and me.
He felt that I was turning conservative; he began to get kind of
paranoid about me. The tension wasn't always there; we continued
to work together and talk and have regular office meetings and
things, but this was in the background. I wasn't completely to
be trusted, and I didn't trust his judgment.

146

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Did Mark Lane get in on some of this?
connection with this.

I saw his name in

Charlie was worried about Mark Lane. Mark Lane was a lot like
Charlie. He was crazy too, in my opinion. Here was a great
left-wing cause for him to identify with, and Charlie was afraid
that Mark Lane was trying to steal the client away from him. A
client that never paid any money. Their rewards were psychic,
they were not financial.

They didn't get paid?

I don't think they got paid anything.

Garry's Trip to Guyana, November 1978

Pesonen: So Congressman Ryan finally—you know, there were congressional
investigations talked about—and Congressman Ryan finally said
that he was going to go down there and see for himself with his
aide Jackie Speier, who is now a member of the assembly. Mark
Lane was going to go down with them, and Charlie said he had to
go, too. And there were a couple of reporters from the Examiner
--one of them was killed. It was in November of 1978.

Lage: And Garry went on that trip also?

Pesonen: Garry went on that trip, too. About a year before that,

Charlie's girlfriend who worked in the office, Pat Richards,
called me in desperation and said Charlie was in Chicago, and she
couldn't find him. She had gotten a message by shortwave from
Guyana that they were all going to kill themselves, and could I
do anything?

Lage: A year before?

Pesonen: I said, "Aw come on, they are not going to do that. Wait until

Charlie gets back, he'll handle it." I had forgotten about that.

So Julie and I and some friends were at a little resort up
on the Klamath River on a fishing trip. It was right before
Thanksgiving, I think, the weekend before Thanksgiving, and we
were listening to the news at night on a little radio that didn't
work very well, and these reports started coming in of some great
massacre in Guyana. The radio would fade out and then come back.
Three people killed, fifteen, the numbers kept growing. I didn't
know what had happened to Charlie or anybody. Then the report

147

Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

came through that Congressman Ryan had been killed, and the
reporter for the Examiner had been killed, and Jackie Speier had
been badly wounded.

So I got back to the office, and we still didn't know where
Charlie was. Nobody had heard from within. Then, about a day or
two later, we heard that he had escaped, and he was coming home.
He arranged, somehow, for a press conference the minute he got
into town. He set it up over at what was then the Franciscan
Hotel at 8th and Market, which was across the street from our
office. He got off the plane, got a cab, and came straight to
the office. He was a ruined man. He had been through something
so horrible, you could tell it. His face was changed, he looked
ten years older. He was a mess, physically.

And he told us what had happened. They had gotten there
with Ryan, and everything was nice for a while, and then it
turned sinister. Some member of the group had pulled a knife on
Ryan, and Charlie and Lane had disarmed this person. There was a
lot of tension. They had agreed to stay as kind of hostages if
Ryan could be allowed to leave. So that was the deal that was
struck, and Ryan and Speier and the reporters and the rest of
their entourage headed for the airport. Unknown to Charlie--! 'm
sure it was not known to Charlie; I'm sure he had nothing to do
with it, or Mark Lane--there was this other plan to assassinate
Ryan when he got to the airstrip. So they put Charlie and Mark
Lane under guard in a couple of little cabins off to the edge of
the compound, and then the killing started. And it wasn't very
far away, and they could hear it.

Where was Jim Jones during all of this?
He was overseeing this mass suicide.
Did he talk to Garry?

I don't recall what Charlie said about that. It was as though
Jones had completely gone crazy, and there was no real
communication there.

So Garry could hear?

He could hear mothers giving cyanide to their kids, and Jones
exhorting them over the loudspeaker.

Well, they figured out what was happening. You didn't need
to be a rocket scientist to do that. And the guard knew what was
happening. They had a young man with a gun who was watching over
them. And Lane, according to Charlie, persuaded this young guard

148

that this was a great historic event and that somebody should be
allowed to go back to the outside world and tell them what a
great historic event it was, and that Charlie and Lane should be
picked as these emissaries. So the guard pointed them out to a
hole in the fence, and they escaped into the jungle and went as
far as they could go. It was apparently a pretty dense tropical
jungle. Then it started to rain and got dark. They spent the
night huddled under a tree.

It had some amusing moments. It is hard to think that it
could, but Lane offered to carry one of Charlie's bags, which had
nothing in it but a hair dryer, and Charlie doesn't even have any
hair. [laughter] He had a toupee. But he carried a hair dryer
for his toupee . And Mark Lane sat in the rain all night in the
rain being eaten alive by insects, chiggers that dug into the
skin, guarding this useless hair dryer.

Well, when it got light, they found their way to a road, and
by this time the authorities were coming in and picked them up
and took them to the airstrip, and they finally got out of there.
When Charlie got to the office, I remember, he pulled his shirt
up and he was just covered with big red welts all over his body.
His stomach was just full of these things. The biting insects
had just eaten them alive that night, and he still had the welts
all over him. And then he went across the street to this press
conference.

Well, everybody in the world was there. I had never seen
such a big press conference. There must have been a pincushion
of a hundred microphones on the podium. I was so dazed by this
whole event, the magnitude, the enormity, the awfulness of it was
so profound, I don't remember a word Charlie said at that press"
conference.

Lage: It is interesting that he had that need, immediately.

A Difficult Decision to Leave the Garry Firm

Pesonen: I went over and just watched in amazement that he would hold a
press conference. I had tried to advise against it when we had
this little office meeting. I said, "Charlie, this is not the
sort of thing you want any publicity on. You don't want to
increase the public identification of you with this horrible
thing that has happened."

149

Well, he had to do it, and he wouldn't listen to anything
like that. A couple of days later, he and I had a talk, and I
said, "Charlie, you need to--." I mean, my economic destiny was
still tied to this firm, and I saw it just destroyed there. That
was when I decided that I was going to get out. I was going to
find a way to get out without embarrassing him or making a public
rift out of it or anything else. I was just going to distance
myself from this hopeless situation.

I said, "Charlie, you need a public relations man. You need
someone to advise you on when to say something and when not to
say something. Sometimes the best thing to do is to not say
anything." To my surprise, he agreed that he wouldn't say
anything unless I cleared it first.

Lage: I bet that didn't last long.

Pesonen: That didn't last very long. He and Mark Lane began accusing each
other.

Lage: After what they had been through together?

Pesonen: After what they had been through together. Each was blaming the
other for not having seen it coming. I said, "Charlie, don't
even get in a pissing match with a skunk."

So a couple of weeks later, here he is back in the papers,
and he has been over to City Hall, and he hasn't talked with
reporters for a couple of weeks, and Connie Chang, who was the
Examiner stringer at City Hall, caught him in the hall and wanted
to get a quote from him about Mark Lane's latest charge. He
says, "I can't talk to you, Connie. My partner tells me don't
ever get in a pissing match with Mark Lane!" [laughter] He
always got it wrong.

Lage: Was he very shaken by this experience?
Pesonen: He was very shaken.

Lage: I would think, psychologically, the faith he had put in this
group, and then to go through that experience--

Pesonen: He had put his whole—he was a true-believer personality. That
is his personality profile. When he got into something, he was
into it with his whole being. And he was a true believer in this
dream he had of Guyana being the perfect socialist experiment.
So he felt just mortally betrayed and humiliated. And Charlie
didn't take humiliation very well. He had enough of it as a kid
when he was an Armenian child, badly treated so I'm told, enough

150

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

so that he changed his name even. He was very complicated. He
had a complex psychology, but I'm no psychologist. He had great
moments of generosity and great moments of wisdom and insight,
but when he got involved in things like this, the Panthers or Jim
Jones and the Temple, he lost all that, and he knew it. He knew
it, and he was humiliated, and he wouldn't admit it. He couldn't
acknowledge his humiliation. I don't know whether that was a
defense mechanism that went back to his childhood or not.

So I began to look around for office space, talk to people
about who I might form a new firm with, and one day Huey Johnson
called up and said, "How would you like to be director of the
Department of Forestry?" It was the perfect way out. It didn't
imply that--. I had been recruited and invited to take this
responsible position in the government of a progressive governor,
who was of interest to everybody. We were all fascinated with
Jerry Brown. And it didn't imply any rejection or disapproval of
Charlie or Barney or Frank or anybody else. I had approached Al
Brotsky to see if he wouldn't work with me to reign Charlie in
some way, and he agreed with me that it was an unviable
situation, but the bonds among those men went a long ways back,
and I was still an upstart, in a way. I was the youngest partner
and not part of that old left world.

A different generation?

A different generation. Al was a much smarter businessman than
the rest of them. Frank McTernan wouldn't hear of it. He was
very offended that I would even suggest some disloyalty to
Charlie. I saw that was hopeless, hopeless to work something out
within the firm. It was only after I had tried to work something
out within the firm, to get some limit, some reins on Charlie
that I elected to leave.

You showed a lot of loyalty yourself, it seems to me.

Well, I had learned a lot from him, and he had been good to me.
And he was a decent man. His bad judgment didn't mean he was
evil, even though he got swept up in that terribly evil thing
that happened down there. I wasn't judgmental about him that
way. Life isn't black and white like that. And he was a good
person, and he had tried to do a lot of good things, and his
heart was in the right place, but his judgment was tragic. It
was just a tragic fatal flaw he had.

Although he probably, I would guess, didn't have anything to do
with the course of events down there.

151

Pesonen: No, I don't think he had anything to do with the course of events
down there, except maybe that his prominent support for the
temple had allowed Jones to accumulate enough power and hold on
to enough people that he could inflict such a disaster on so many
people. I suppose if Charlie had questioned them sooner, his
paranoia might have exploded sooner. Who knows? I don't know
what history would have done some other way. But Charlie was a
person I worked with for ten years. I saw no point in increasing
his anguish or humiliation. If I had said anything publicly, it
might have been a one -day story, and it would have gone away, and
then the people who knew me and knew him would remember an act of
disloyalty, and an unnecessary one.

152

VI INITIATIVE CAMPAIGN FOR THE NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS ACT, 1973-
1976

[Interview 5: March 12, 1992] ft

Presumed Dead

Pesonen: I went to Washington, D.C., on the fifth of March, 1992, for a
meeting on a topic completely unrelated to anything we are
talking about, and beforehand I called J. Samuel Walker, who is
not only the historian of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he
is a teacher at Georgetown University of diplomatic history. He
is an historian. I think I recall he is from Harvard
[University] . That is where he got his education. He is a very
nice guy, and he was delighted to hear from me because he had
sent some of his graduate students out to do some of the research
for that article that he wrote, and the report came back that I
was dead. [Laughter]

Lage: Somebody didn't want to get in touch with you, it sounds like.

Pesonen: I said, "Well, maybe that is somebody full of wishful thinking at
PG&E [Pacific Gas and Electric Company]." It might have been
that they made those inquiries while I was really sick in 1984 or
1983. It was December of '83 when I got really sick. The
reports were that I might not live, and maybe somebody figured
that they didn't hear anymore so I didn't make it. [Laughter]

So we had a nice visit. That article is part of a book
which is coming out. UC [University of California] Press is
publishing it and it will be out this summer. He was not really
aware of the Point Arena struggle for some reason, so I gave him
a copy of--

Lage: That's interesting—that he wouldn't have followed through to the
Point Arena--

153

Pesonen: Well, he had other things to do, I guess. Anyway, I gave him a
copy of the pamphlet that I wrote for the Sierra Club on the
Point Arena nuclear plant, and he is going to look into possibly
following up and doing something more on that history.

Lage: It makes a nice comparison.

Pesonen: Well, it makes a nice comparison, but it also is part of the
historic curve.

Genesis of the Idea for Initiative Effort in California

A National Antinuclear-Power Network

Lage: We are going to talk about the Nuclear Safeguards Initiative
today.

Pesonen: That's a good story. That's a good long story.
Lage: When did you get involved with it?

Pesonen: I think I was in on the beginnings of it. The notion started
kicking around among the people who were in the network of the
antinuclear movement.

Lage: Now tell me about the network a little bit. You haven't really

talked about your relationship with other aspects of the movement
in other parts of the country.

Pesonen: Well, the network just grew informally. The Bodega Bay campaign
was the beginning of it, but the nuclear industry was really
starting to take off. Orders were coming in; it was very
fashionable for utilities across the country to propose nuclear
power plants. Bodega had kind of opened people's eyes--it had
gotten a lot of national publicity—to the fact that there were
problems, some kind of a problem. So I got lots of inquiries
from little citizen groups around the country: in New Jersey on
the Oyster Point plant, I think it was called; plants in
Michigan; and of course there were a couple of other plants
proposed in California. There began to be a little body of
literature in popular media. I just had a little address book
with names and phone numbers of people who had called me.

The first coalescing, I guess, of any kind of organization
was the Union of Concerned Scientists, which was formed by Henry

154

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Kendall at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and a
fellow named Dan Ford and probably some other people that I
didn't know. They began to issue papers on various issues and
testify in congressional hearings and in licensing hearings or
public meetings of various kinds. It wasn't so much an
antinuclear movement as it was very concerned about the safety of
large nuclear power plants that were water-moderated, based on
that Weinberg early design: pressurized or boiling water
reactors, which were the two basic types of light water-moderated
reactors. When they got big, up around a thousand, two thousand
megawatts, there were serious untested safety measures that
couldn't be tested. They were just too massive and too
problematic.

So the idea got developed, and I don't remember who
originated it, for a meeting at Henry Kendall's house that would
plan the future strategy of the antinuclear movement. I think
that meeting took place in 1972 or '73. I didn't start my diary
until after that, so I can't remember exactly when that was. But
it was in the early seventies, and I went and Richard Spohn went.
Richard Spohn was with CalPIRG, the California Public Interest
Research Group, now called California Citizens Action, I think.

CalPIRG was in existence already?

I think it was.
organization.

No, Spohn was with the [Ralph] Nader

Oh, the Nader organization. It probably grew into CalPIRG.

He was a southern California stringer for the Nader organization.
Joan Mclntyre and maybe Dorothy Green were there. There were
probably ten or twelve, maybe fifteen people there. It was a
two-day meeting at Henry's house in Boston. What emerged from
that was a plan to use California as the first place for a really
well-organized campaign that was generic and not specific to
individual plants.

Using the initiative process?

Well, that was the backup. We thought the first thing we would
do was try to see if we could get legislation. The initiative
process is very risky, very expensive.

It wasn't as frequently used then.

It wasn't as frequently used then, that's true. We knew about
it, and it had been used before.

155

Lage: The Coastal Zone Conservation Act was November 1972. '
Pesonen: And that was an initiative.

Lage: Right. And then Proposition 9 was in June 1972. It was
defeated. The Clean Environment Act. It was very broad.

Pesonen: That was the [Edward] Koupal measure. It had some antinuclear
components to it, but it also attempted to ban all compounds
containing DDT, chlorofluorocarbons; it was very foresighted in
that respect. But it was a catchall. That was put together by
Ed Koupal.

Ed Koupal and the Art of Signature-Gathering

Lage: Was Koupal at this meeting at Kendall's house?

Pesonen: I don't think Koupal was there, but somebody from Koupal 's

organization was there. Koupal was a very interesting fellow.
He had been a car salesman up in Roseville, and he somehow got
sore at Governor [Ronald] Reagan and decided to try to recall
him. He launched the first recall campaign against Reagan as
governor, and it failed. But he developed techniques for getting
signatures for initiatives, referendums, recalls. You have to
get a lot of signatures, and he was organized about it.

His theory, as I heard him say it many times, was based on
how he sold cars. Two yeses and you get a sale. So he developed
a very simple technique of setting up a table at a place of high
pedestrian traffic and having one person behind the table, have
the petition pasted down on the table facing toward the traffic,
and have a shill or a barker out standing on the sidewalk and
asking passersby two simple questions: one, do you want nuclear
power to be safe? (This is by example.) He would say, "Do you
want good government"--something you couldn't say "no" to--and
"Are you a registered voter?" You've got these two yeses, and by
that time you are leading the person over to the table and
handing them a pen. It worked very well.

So Koupal was clearly the master of how to get a lot of
signatures, and I think somebody from Koupal 's organization was
there. Koupal had decided that the next issue he was going to
take on was nuclear power. It had a certain sex appeal to a lot

1 Proposition 20 (November 1972)

156

of people. Politicians and people in public office were uneasy
about it, but they saw something growing. They felt that there
was something happening here that they had better know something
about. Some of the more courageous ones, or foolish ones,
depending on your point of view, took positions against nuclear
power.

Assemblyman Charles Warren's Encouragement

Pesonen: Anyway, this meeting ended up with a plan that Richard Spohn and
I, I think, would go and see [Assemblyman Charles] Charlie
Warren. We went to see Charlie and we spent a couple of hours
with him. That must have been in early '73, and Charlie said,
"There is just no way I'm going to get any kind of legislation
through this legislature in this current climate." The labor
unions were very much pronuclear, led by the construction unions.
There just wasn't enough of a political base to make anybody in
Sacramento courageous enough to take that on. Charlie would have
done it if it had a chance, but he thought it was hopeless.

Lage: Had he made up his mind about nuclear power at that point?

Pesonen: Oh yes. Charlie, by that time, was pretty clear that nuclear

power was too big a problem. He had been involved in some of the
early protests on San Onofre, and he had read up about it. He
was foresighted enough to see that there was something happening
here and that there were a lot of problems with nuclear power.
But he was a member of the assembly; he was elected out of a
district somewhere down in Los Angeles, and he didn't have a
groundswell in his district either. But he was an
environmentalist, and he was in touch with the environmental
community. Dorothy Green, active in both the women's and the
environmental movement in Los Angeles, was very active I know,
and I think she had his ear.

He said, "I won't be able to get anything through this
legislature until you bring an initiative." We had already
thought that maybe an initiative was the fall-back position, so
we went back and we started talking about how to put together an
initiative campaign. I had never done one, Roupal had. And
Alvin Duskin, who was an acquaintance of Kendall's — I think
Duskin was at that meeting, too--Duskin and Koupal teamed up to
put the initiative together.

157

Early Efforts by Koupal, Duskin, and the People's Lobby

Lage: And Duskin was the clothing manufacturer in San Francisco?

Pesonen: He was the clothing manufacturer, but he had run an initiative in
San Francisco against high-rise buildings in the early seventies.
It failed, but he became quite well known as an activist on
environmental causes .

So I kind of was left out of this process. I would talk to
Duskin now and then, he would call me for my advice on something,
but for some reason he didn't want me involved. I felt I was
being excluded from the process, partly because I didn't have the
kind of time he did and Koupal did, but also they got some money.
I think they got some money from Kendall. I think they might
have gotten twenty-five thousand dollars to get it started, which
was a lot of money in those days. They put the campaign together
and they got a crew of volunteers, and I kind of watched it from
the sidelines. That had to have been before '73 because I was
still in my office at 345 Market Street.

Lage: So this was early on?
Pesonen: This was very early on.

I kind of resented this. I thought, you know, I am the
father of this thing and I ought to have more involvement, and as
I watched it, I thought they were making some mistakes. I had
some part in the drafting; I saw it as a draft. Duskin would
send me drafts of the measure, and then it would go through three
or four iterations, and I would see another draft, and I wouldn't
know what had gone on.

Lage:

Who was drafting it? Did they have legal input?

Pesonen: Duskin and Koupal and some other people that they were involved
with, whom I don't remember.

Anyway, they started their signature gathering, and I think
in those days you had to get something around 300,000 statewide
to qualify the measure. And there is a time line; there is a
statutory period within which you can get those signatures after
the secretary of state gives title and summary and you get them
printed up in the proper form. Occasionally, I would get reports
on how the numbers were going, and they were disappointing. So
at some point--.

158

In the interval, we moved our office up to 1256 Market, and
I distinctly remember getting a call from the local signature-
gathering group in San Francisco. It was run by a woman whose
name I don't remember, but she had been kind of delegated the San
Francisco area or the Bay Area. A group of maybe eight or nine
of the people who had been involved in the signature gathering
came to my office and said that they were convinced that they
were not going to make the deadline; the campaign was not well
organized, the morale was low. Something had to be done, and
would I step in and fix it and help them decide what to do?

I saw immediately this was a prescription for friction
between me and Duskin and Koupal. [Laughter] So I called Duskin
and — Koupal was a very difficult person to deal with. He had a
huge ego and was very manipulative. He and his wife, Joyce, they
were a team. They were street fighters.

Lage: And their group was People's Lobby?

Pesonen: It was People's Lobby. They had then started forming an

organization called People for Proof, which would be the spinoff
organization to handle the nuclear initiative. They said, "Oh,
it's fine. We're going to make it. We'll get another infusion
of money." And I didn't believe them, nor did their troops, who
had come to me. I had not gone out and rounded this up, I just
was watching at this point, but I was invited to come in by this
dissident group of signature gatherers. A lot of street people
and counter-culture types: long hair and beads and bangles and
marijuana smoke in the air.

Lage: These were the ones who were gathering the signatures?

Pesonen: Yes. [Laughter] So we had a series of meetings around town. I
remember one was in North Beach at some restaurant in the back
room, and all of the people who had been involved in this effort
would come to these meetings and the idea was to get some
grassroots sense of how the campaign should be organized, and
make the decision, which was a very critical strategic decision,
whether to go all the way and not get enough signatures and start
over, or whether to gracefully announce that we were suspending
the campaign to take another look at it and start over. That was
the strategy I wanted to follow.

I said, "If you go right up to the statutory deadline and
the secretary of state announces that you failed to get enough
signatures, your credibility is in bad shape. It would be very
hard to qualify another one because you go in as a failure.
Whereas if you announce early on that you have taken another look
at your effort, and you want to do some fine tuning on it and

159

start over, and it has been a good training to get started on
this one, you sound like you are in charge of what you are
doing." [Laughter] So my view prevailed finally. There was a
lot of debate about it.

Pesonen's Emergence as Leader of a New Campaign, 1975

Lage:

Pesonen:

Now, were you talking with Koupal and Duskin also?
signature gatherers?

Or with your

Lage:

Pesonen:

I guess I was talking to them occasionally, but I had started to
emerge as the new leader, and this dissident group grew to
involve most of the people who had been working on the campaign.

Well, I didn't know where it was headed and I wasn't getting
paid for all of this, but it was important to me. So we finally
made that decision. We issued a press release and held a press
conference and said, "This has been a very instructive effort and
we are going to make some changes in the measure and start over."
So that's what we did. The drafting was done very collectively
in these meetings.

The drafting of the initiative?

The drafting of the new initiative. But the basic form was the
original. I can't take credit for completely rewriting it. But
we cleaned it up some. The basic themes remained the same: the
safe disposal of the spent fuel, the emergency cooling systems,
and the Price-Anderson Act' insurance umbrella. Those all had to
be changed, and those were the three main themes of the first
measure, too.

So we redrafted it, we submitted it to the secretary of
state, we got a new petition, and I thought we would start with
the same old group of people, but better organized. We got a new
budget; Henry Kendall sent me five thousand dollars, and I set it
up virtually on a card table in the basement of my law office. I
hired a young man, Dwight Cocke, to kind of keep track of it and
organize it. He worked down in the basement of the law office;
that was our first official space. Dwight had been involved in
the first effort, and he was a level-headed young man and
understood Koupal 's technique.

'Atomic Energy Damages Act of 1954, 71 Stat. 576 (1954) is popularly
called the Price-Anderson Act.

160

Lage: What role did Koupal take in this second effort?

Pesonen: There was a big struggle at that point, a big power struggle over
who was going to take charge of this new campaign. [State Board
of Equalization Member William] Bill Bennett, I believe, saw it
as a chance to resurrect his own political fortunes by being
chairman with Roupal really running the show. Koupal and a woman
named [Susan] Sue Steigerwalt and Richard Spohn were the people
on the other side.

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

I have started reading my diary on it, which is very
piecemeal, but I do remember that there was a tremendous amount
of intrigue and Machiavellian stuff going on, all of which
frustrated me. But I knew that I did not want Koupal in charge
of this campaign and that Koupal didn't want me in charge of this
campaign. [Laughter] It seems too silly in retrospect because
there was absolutely no money in it, and I wasn't doing it for
any glory. I was doing it purely out of belief in what it stood
for, but I suspected Koupal 's motives, and I suspected Bennett's
motives, and I wasn't too sure about Spohn "s motives.

Now, what did you suspect their motives might be?

Well, it was just aggrandizement for Koupal. For Bennett, I
believed he had been looking since the Bodega days for some
striking environmental issue on which he could ride to the
governor's office. It was a quixotic view of the world. I think
Bennett's always had a somewhat quixotic view of the political
world. You know, he is still on the State Board of Equalization,
and he was on the PUC [Public Utilities Commission] at the time
of the second part of Bodega. And he was a very fine lawyer,
too. He won a great case when he was at the PUC. He actually
was on the commission and a lawyer for the commission, I think,
before the U.S. Supreme Court on allocation of natural gas. It
was a great consumer victory. He was a fine lawyer, but he is a
big, volatile, energetic Irishman with a huge ego, and his
judgment isn't always the best.

Koupal1 s judgment --Koupal didn't believe in anything except
he loved the business of collecting signatures.

That's interesting,
issue?

So it wasn't so much the nuclear power

No, I don't think it was that. He just loved to kick ass and
cause trouble, and he knew how to do it.

Lage:

A lot more fun than selling cars.

161

Pesonen: Yes, a lot more fun than selling cars. And also, he always

picked issues that were in the public interest. I'm sure his
heart was in the right place, in some way. But his judgment
about the long-term solid nailing down of sound policy I didn't
have much respect for.

So this struggle went on for five or six months, and 1 was
very clear on what I wanted, and I finally prevailed. I
prevailed at a big meeting. I think it was in early '75 held at
the Sierra Club office, I think. I just wore them down.

Lage: Was this over the question of leadership?

Pesonen: It was a question of leadership, and it came to a vote as to

whether Bennett would be the chairman or I would be the chairman.

Lage: I see.

Pesonen: And I won that vote. Bennett was the only one who voted against
me. [Laughter] Koupal was not present. I had engineered the
agenda for the meeting and the constituency who was there. It
was not democratic.

Lage: So you had gotten your people there?

Pesonen: I had gotten my people there. Part of the problem grew out of a
split between the north and the south. The real organizing
strength was in the Bay Area, mostly in San Francisco. There was
a lot of trouble getting some coherent organization going in
southern California. Koupal was, by this time, living in
southern California, and nobody could seem to pull anything
together down there, but they had an organization, with a name
and getting press attention, called People for Proof. That's
what we had called ourselves, too—People for Proof. We couldn't
have two Peoples for Proofs. It wasn't a very good name anyway,
but the confusion of two of them without a single voice speaking
was a prescription for disaster. So I became the chair of People
for Proof, and then we decided to change the name to Calif ornians
for Nuclear Safeguards, and then there was no more People for
Proof. We sort of gobbled up the southern California People for
Proof and then put the name on ice.

Well, once that decision had been made, that I was clearly
the chosen leader, then we could start putting our energies into
a strategy, budget, fund raising, organizing, getting the people.

162

The Role of Creative Initiative in Qualifying the Ballot Measure

Pesonen: It was about this time that we heard about Project Survival, or
it was called then—what was it called?

Lage: Was that Creative Initiative?

Pesonen: Creative Initiative. Dwight Cocke was contacted by them, I think
in December of '74. They were interested in the nuclear
initiative question, and they wanted me to come and speak to
them. I knew nothing about them. I just knew there was this big
organization down the Peninsula [south of San Francisco] that
seemed mysterious and powerful. I didn't understand it.

First Meeting with an Extraordinary Organization: Funds and
Personal Resources

Pesonen: So we made arrangements for me to go and speak to Creative
Initiative in January of '75, I think. It was at Gunn High
School in Palo Alto at the auditorium. I went down there by
myself. I met Dwight and his wife or girlfriend there, Lori--I
don't remember her last name—there were five or six of us from
the organization Calif ornians for Nuclear Safeguards. Dwight was
kind of in charge of the signature-gathering organization. I've
forgotten who was in charge of raising money. I walked into this
place, and here were probably five hundred people, all sitting
quietly in their seats. All couples, all middle class or better,
all professionals, well dressed, coats and ties, and I just
didn't know what I was getting into.

Lage: You weren't used to this? [Laughter]
II

Pesonen: Most of our volunteers were, you know, refugees from the Haight-
Ashbury of the sixties, all kinds of counter-culture people,
mostly. And this was something entirely different.

Lage: Had you gone down in suit and tie?
Pesonen: Yes, I was dressed up.

Well, I didn't know quite what I was going to say. I didn't
have a prepared address. It was very clear that they had strong
leadership. There was a fellow named [James] Jim Burch who was

163

very much in charge and Amelia Rathbun, a big, powerful-voiced,
red-haired woman.

Lage: Rathbun?

Pesonen: Her husband [Harry J.] was a law professor at Stanford

[University] and had written the book on Creative Initiative.
[Creative Initiative: Guide to Fulfillment, Palo Alto, CA:
Creative Initiative Foundation, 1976].

But I really knew nothing about the organization except
little snippets and bits and pieces of things which didn't make
any sense to me. So I just started to tell them kind of my life
story of my involvement with the nuclear power movement, starting
with Bodega and then I opened it up to questions. And somebody
asked me the question, somebody from the audience—maybe it was
Amelia herself who asked the question- -"What kept you going in
light of all of these obstacles and setbacks?" I said, "Because
I knew I was right," and the audience burst into applause.

Lage: You gave the right answer!

Pesonen: I gave the right answer. So they took a break for lunch- -this

whole process took all morning- -and Jim Burch got up and laid out
the agenda. He said, "Now we are all going to go outside and
have lunch." It was a January day, but it was one of these
wonderful January days we get occasionally, when it turns lovely
and warm, and the trees start to show they are going to turn to
blossoms, and you can sit out on the lawn and take your jacket
off. It was just an absolutely beautiful January day, maybe
seventy-five degrees, eighty degrees. It was just beautiful.

The leadership of the group grabbed onto me, and we went
with our bag lunches out onto the lawn. Here were all of the
rest of these people scattered all over the place. Burch
announced, he said, "You have heard David speak and you know that
he needs help, and so now is the time to choose." And I could
hear these code words, you know, these code phrases or code--.
There was a common understanding about the meaning of these
things he was saying.

Lage: Like "time to choose?"

Pesonen: Like "time to choose." As though they had prepared themselves

for this. He said, "And those of you who have chosen, come back
after lunch into this room," which was the main auditorium, "and
those of you who are unsure go into the other room," which was a
little tiny room, a little side auditorium. [Laughter]

164

So I started questioning them at lunch. I said, "Well, you
know, what are the origins of this group? Who are you?" They
were very forthcoming, it seemed like, but I still didn't
understand it. This was a sociological phenomenon of some kind
that had coalesced, and I was trying to figure it out. What they
told me was, in essence, that these were people who were
dissatisfied with the direction of the world and felt that their
lives were not being fulfilled by their work alone, and that they
had an obligation to use their enormous energy and education.
They were all engineers, lawyers, doctors, professional people of
all kinds, people who owned their own successful businesses,
pretty much centered in the Peninsula and pretty much very upper
middle class, and people who had come from educated families.

And they or many of them had found problems in their
marriages. This was very strongly oriented towards married
couples, and they had very clear ideas about the proper role of
women and the proper role of men. They had this book that
Rathbun had written that there were innate qualities that were
male qualities and innate qualities that were female qualities,
and that both sexes possessed both qualities but in different
proportions and that they could be most effective in the world if
they understood their proper distribution of these male /female
qualities. It was very much oriented towards their spirituality
around their sexuality. Not sexuality, but their gender.

Bits and pieces of that started to come out, but the gist of
it was that as they grew, and they grew by word of mouth and
meetings in people's living rooms and so on, that when they got
to a thousand couples, they would reach their critical mass and
it was time "to go out," as they said—this was their term—and
choose an issue in the outside world and concentrate all of this
organized energy they had been able to figure out and put
together by sorting out their various positions in the world, and
direct all of that energy towards changing the world. They had
watched a number of different issues develop, and they had chosen
the Nuclear Safeguards Initiative as the issue that they would
use to turn out and come out of their living rooms and go public.

Lage: All of this unbeknownst to the people with the Nuclear Safeguards
Initiative?

Pesonen: Absolutely unbeknownst to me. They had made this decision on

their own without talking to us. But they weren't sure about it
until they talked to the leader of what they perceived as the
antinuclear or nuclear safety measure. When I had said, "Because
I knew I was right," that somehow carried the message to them
that I was the right person they were willing to work with. I
had the integrity they were looking for. They were very

165

suspicious of politics. They were very suspicious of the
political process generally. They thought it was corrupt and
full of compromise, and here was somebody they perceived as not
like that.

So we went back into this auditorium, and I sat down in the
front row with Jim Burch. The program then was for our crew,
Dwight Cocke and the other people who were with him, to
demonstrate how you get signatures. They put on kind of a mock
street scene on the stage. Somebody would walk by and we showed
them Koupal's technique for getting signatures. And virtually
everybody came back into the main auditorium. Only a few people
didn't. But before this demonstration began, Burch got up and
said, "Now, you heard David say they needed some money." And
from nowhere it seemed, these attractive women, beautifully
dressed, carrying big boxes, emerged from the back of the
auditorium, came down the aisles passing these — it was like
church- -pas sing these boxes up and down the aisles. Money was
pouring into them. Checks and cash and--

Lage: You must have been in seventh heaven!

Pesonen: I couldn't believe it. We were broke. Calif ornians for Nuclear
Safeguards was broke. I figured this campaign has failed also,
like the previous Duskin/Koupal campaign. We were out of money.
We needed money to pay the expenses of the people who were out
gathering the signatures. We were running it on a shoestring,
but it still costs money to run a campaign like that and we just
didn't have it. It pretty well had dried up. And I'm no
fundraiser. I don't like fundraising; I don't know how to do it.
I'm sort of the big idea, strategy, leader-type person, but I
don't know how to do a lot of these things, and I couldn't find
anybody who did, either, or could do it well enough for us to
pull through.

So Creative Initiative came along at just the most critical
moment. I'm convinced that that campaign never would have made
it without Creative Initiative. They energized that campaign.

Lage: So they gave you money.

Pesonen: Well, so the boxes were then taken off into some remote place, I
don't know, to count all of the money, and we started this
demonstration on the stage on how to gather signatures, and maybe
an hour went by. Suddenly somebody came over and whispered in
Jim Burch 's ear, and he walked up to the stage and took the
microphone. He interrupted the show that was going on, that we
were putting on. He asked me to come up on the stage. There was
a long silence, everybody had shut up; they knew exactly what he

166

was going to say. He said, "Twenty thousand dollars." [pause]
That's all he said. I mean, he didn't say, "We've counted the
money and--" he just uttered the words, "Twenty thousand
dollars," and the whole audience burst into applause.

Well, I was overwhelmed. I was bowled over. A thousand
dollars was a big chunk of cash for us. So we walked down off
the stage, and he just handed this money to me.

Lage: This cash?

Pesonen: Most of it was checks. He just handed me a big fistful of
checks. He said the cash was maybe three or four thousand
dollars, and they were going to keep that to pay for this
organization and to pay for their own organizing effort, and they
were going to give all of the checks to me. I could have just
walked out with all of that money. The checks were all made out
to Calif ornians for Nuclear Safeguards.

Lage : I wonder how much background they had on you?
Pesonen: They had done some background on me.
Lage: They must have.

Pesonen: Yes, they had done quite a bit of background, but I don't know
how efficient they were about it. And I really don't know what
they ever found out. I guess what they found out was that
everything I told them in my speech was true. I suspect that's
as far as it went.

Well, I said, "Jim, we can't do this." I said, "First of"
all, we've got to comply with the California Fair Political
Practices Act.1 We have to know the employers of all these
people; we have to report all of this money." This was '74. We
were the first statewide initiative to have to comply with the
Fair Political Practices Act.

Of course, they didn't have all of their rules or
regulations in order; they didn't have their forms completely
settled. The FPPC [Fair Political Practices Commission] didn't
quite know what it was doing either, but we knew that we were a
controversial campaign, that we would be under a microscope, that
any mistake we made could be very damaging to the campaign. So
we had to be like Caesar's wife as the first measure to go

'Political Reform Act of 1974 came into being in Proposition 9 (June
1974).

167

through under this complex set of regulations. So we had some
people helping us on this, but I didn't really know what we had
to do, and I didn't want to screw up.

So I said, "We have got to be very careful how we handle
this money." I could have run off and gone to Mexico with it,
you know. I said, "Furthermore, all of the names are going to be
a public record, and I know you've got people here who work for
GE [General Electric] or Westinghouse or are in some other way
involved in the nuclear industry, and they may get retaliation
from their employers." Well, they hadn't thought of any of this.
They were really innocent in a lot of ways .

So Burch went back and announced that we would have to
publicly report any donation; that it could come to the attention
of the employer, and if anybody wanted to reconsider their
contribution, we would understand. He said, "Write a note and
send us up your name." So they collected maybe ten or fifteen
names, and Jim and I sat out in the sun on a garden railing and
went through every check and found these fifteen names and pulled
those checks out. They took those back. Then, a couple of days
later, I gave the checks to the volunteer outfit that was
handling our accounting.

When our demonstration was over, Jim said, "Okay, now we are
going to organize our resources." You know, we didn't have a
lawyer; we didn't have a professional public relations person.
There were lots of resources that a big campaign would have at
its fingertips today, and we were doing it ourselves, a lot of
that. I was doing some of the lawyering.

We were unhappy with the secretary of state's title and
summary and the estimate of the impact on tax revenues. We
thought it was a biased summary of the measure. That had to be
printed in bold type at the top of the petition, and it would be
printed in bold type in the voter pamphlet. So I brought a suit
in the Sacramento Superior Court to reform the measure. I sued
the secretary of state, the attorney general's office, and I
think it was the legislative counsel.

Lage: Was that unusual?

Pesonen: That was very unusual. It's almost never done,
trial in Sacramento. I tried the case.

And we had a

Lage: And what was the outcome?

Pesonen: We lost it. [Laughter] We got some publicity out of it. The

state hired an outside lawyer, who is now on the federal court of

168

appeals, on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who was very
good, and he was a good liberal. A well-known lawyer in southern
California, Stephen Reinhardt. He's a very good lawyer. But it
is a very uphill battle. Here you are trying to ask a judge to
rewrite a summary of a confusing statute—the initiative measure
— with no standards and up against three arms of government who
are in business to write this kind of stuff. We took a petition
to the California Supreme Court right after that, and that didn't
work either, but it was worth doing.

Well, so anyway that is a demonstration: I was managing the
campaign and I was doing the lawyer ing for it, and we didn't have
any money. So Burch gets up and he says, "All right. In
classroom 3B all the lawyers go, and in classroom x all of the
people who are in the business of public relations, and the
people who are accountants go in this room." But that was all of
the men. The women were to go into another auditorium and learn
more about signature gathering and organize their signature
gathering.

Lage: The women had an innate ability in that direction?

Pesonen: Women supposedly have this innate ability, and the men were the
professional doers, in their view.

So we broke up and we spread out into these various centers
to get better organized, and I went into the room with the
lawyers. There were thirty lawyers in there. All with private
practices, some with government. Paul Valentine, who has a firm
in Palo Alto, a very nice man, took the lead. Valentine said,
"All right, the first thing we are all going to do is hold
hands," and all thirty lawyers held hands in a circle.
[Laughter] He said, "And now we are going to tell why we are
here, why we have chosen." Every person in the room gave a
testimonial to this great moment in his life when he had decided
that he was not going to be selfish anymore; he wasn't going to
be turned inward just to making money; he was going to give
himself up to this movement.

Well, I was just completely bowled over. I was swept away
by this power that was at my disposal all of a sudden. It was
such an overwhelming change from this shoestring operation that
we had. Thirty lawyers from none. And I knew that going on in
these other rooms were all of these accountants and public
relations people, and we had some of our staff in those rooms.
And then a room with two hundred women ready to hit the streets,
dressed in their Saks Fifth Avenue finest. Well coif fed and well
made-up. And they all were very pretty; they all were in their
thirties and early forties; they were professional women; they

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

169

all had college degrees; they were married to professional
people. They just wanted to hit the streets. I couldn't believe
it.

It must have been like a dream!

It was like a dream. I couldn't get it. I went home and told
Julie about it; I couldn't absorb it all. I had a stack of
checks on the seat in the car when I drove home by myself. It
was six inches high with just a big rubber band around it.

That's a great picture.

Well, I was so overwhelmed by this and inspired. I was inspired
that we had what I thought we needed now to get the campaign
qualified—get the measure qualified. All of my depression and
fear that we were failing just was gone. This was a huge engine
at our disposal. I thought it was naive; I thought it was likely
to be disappointed in the long run, but I didn't care. I was
going to use that resource.

After the lawyers gave their testimonials, then what?
you do with thirty lawyers?

What do

Pesonen: That's right. We had an abundance of riches and resources we

didn't really need for lawyer ing. But we knew that there would
be legal issues come up. Maybe on the campaign reform act,
compliance with that. We just brainstormed for a little while,
and then I left. I left early. I said, "You guys run it; we'll
be in touch."

A Sense of Uneasiness

Pesonen: There was a part of me that was uneasy with this.

Lage: You kind of took on a responsibility to them, in a sense?

Pesonen: Yes.

Lage: To provide a vehicle.

Pesonen: That was part of it; it was just suddenly a huge responsibility

on me. I couldn't duck out of this quietly anymore if I got worn
out or was broke—you know, I wasn't in a lucrative law firm. I
still had to make a living. And I was stealing a lot of time

170

from the office for this, and they all knew it, and they
supported me, but I was not earning my keep.

But there was something else that I was uneasy about. I'm
uneasy about any mass movement. There is a submergence of the
individual in those things, and they can be very dangerous.
There was a little tickle of uneasiness about that. Not very
much, but I had some distance on it.

Well, then the question was how do we really turn this
resource to use. I didn't get involved in the day-to-day
business of that, I delegated that to Dwight and to a guy named
Richard Grossman, who did a lot of writing for us. There were
some other people. It is all a big blur as I look back on it,
and I can't remember who they all were. I'm sure if I met them
now and they reminded me it would all come back, but--.

Organizing in Southern California

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

What did you do for southern California?
didn't have people down there, did they?

Creative Initiative

Creative Initiative didn't have many people in southern
California. It had some, and I'm glad you reminded me. That was
one of the tasks we gave to them, to help build a southern
California organization. Just go down there and do it. Some of
them were in television advertising, so they had ins. They knew
how to open doors, and they set up a southern California
organization.

So you could turn things over to them?

Pesonen: I could turn a lot over to them, and I could trust them to do it.
They had some screwy ideas . They had kind of a pyramid scheme
notion about how the world would work: if you got ten people to
sign up, and they got ten people to sign up, you know, you would
multiply this so fast pretty soon you had signed up the whole
state. I can remember going to one meeting with them where they
firmly believed that we would have, within three weeks, all of
the signatures we needed because of this multiplying effect. I
knew that was going to run into a rocky future pretty quick, and
it did. The first group of ten they contacted, of course, were
people like themselves. Those people then began to contact
people who weren't like themselves and so on.

171

But we got the signatures, and we got them fast. They set
up tables everywhere. They were in every mall, they were on
every major street corner, they were in southern California. And
these were people who had personal money. These were people who
made salaries of seventy-five, one hundred, one hundred fifty,
two hundred thousand dollars a year. They were doctors- -

Lage: But also must have had a lot of commitments at home, to jobs,
family?

Pesonen: They had made personal decisions that for the next year

every thing- -many of them quit their business—we had four or five
doctors who simply suspended their medical practices for a year,
lawyers who suspended their law practices for a year. They just
put everything they had into this. And they paid their own way;
we didn't have to reimburse them. So they'd fly back and forth
to southern California all of the time. I kept seeing them on
planes when 1 went down there to appear on television programs.
There was never an expense voucher from them for this . Maybe we
should have reported it to the FPPC [Fair Political Practices
Commission], you know, as a contribution, but I don't think we
did. I don't really remember what happened on that.

The "Defection" of Three General Electric Nuclear Engineers

Pesonen: It scared the hell out of the nuclear industry. The word got out
pretty fast. There were three nuclear engineers who worked for
GE, who were involved with Creative Initiative. The three
engineers, Dick Hubbard, Dale Minor and Bridenbaugh, I think his
name was--MHB. They were nuclear engineers building nuclear
power plants .

Lage: Had they been the ones that interested the group in this issue,
do you think?

Pesonen: No, no. They were drawn into it later. But they were troubled
by what they were doing. They were all engineers with General
Electric. General Electric in San Jose had its nuclear
engineering center. In fact, that's the place where Governor
[Edmund G.] Pat Brown [Sr.] had announced in 1958 that the state
would become a center of nuclear development, and where he had
promised to appoint [Retired Colonel] Alexander Grendon to this

172

new position in his administration.1 The reason he made that
announcement in San Jose was that that was the center of nuclear
engineering for General Electric.

These young men worked for GE. They had been educated as
nuclear engineers or chemical engineers. They all had a nuclear
engineering background, and they had worked at the Hanford works.
I remember I think it was Dale Hubbard's wife telling me about
when they were a young couple, and this was his first job out of
college, working for the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] at the
Hanford nuclear works. The first morning they saw what looked
like a milk truck pull up. They thought, "Well, how nice of the
government to deliver milk." They had a baby. But what they
delivered was empty bottles, because everybody in the town had to
give a urine sample, which was picked up every day. The truck
would come back at night to pick up the bottles to test for
plutonium, cesium, strontium-90.

Lage: They were guinea pigs?

Pesonen: They were guinea pigs. That had planted some seeds of worry

early on. So they went public. We had a long agonizing meeting.
I remember we spent one whole day and an evening in a kind of a
counseling session with them about what this would mean if they
went public and they held a press conference about their
opposition to nuclear power and their support for the nuclear
initiative, given their background.

Well, it was an explosive press conference. It just shook
the whole industry. This was another public relations coup that
Pesonen had pulled off; I'm sure that's how they saw it. But it
was written up all over the place: "Nuclear Engineers Defect in
Favor of the Nuclear Initiative." It went into the highest
boardrooms, I'm sure. Westinghouse, Babcock-Wilcox, GE, PG&E,
Southern California Edison, and all of the other peripheral
industries that were connected with the nuclear industry. This
really made an impact; it was a Time magazine story, all kinds of
stuff.

'The position was coordinator of Atomic Energy Development and
Radiation Protection.

173

Leadership and Nature of Creative Initiative

Pesonen: That was an outgrowth of this Project Survival. They spun off

this separate legal entity, Project Survival, but it was all made
up of the Creative Initiative people.

Lage: The Creative Initiative continued as a name and a group, and this
was their nuclear fighting arm?

Pesonen: Yes.
II

Pesonen: It was very well organized. I mean, you would go to a meeting

with them, and there would be thirty people in the room. If you
go to a usual meeting that is called together by some
neighborhood organization, the subject just sort of flows all
over the place, and it never gets focused, and there are egos
going on and all kinds of static. There was none of that,
absolutely none of that when you went to one of their meetings.
Everybody who said something said something on the point, they
didn't say anything superfluous. You couldn't hear their ego
echoing in it, you couldn't hear any other distractions going on.
Their minds were clear and they were goal oriented.

Lage: Was this the type of people that they drew, or do you think it
was the training?

Pesonen: I think it was the training. They were probably that kind of
people anyway, but they had that training. And they were all
nice people; I liked them, but I never felt completely
comfortable, and I don't know whether they sensed that or not. I
never joined. They tried to recruit Julie and me as members of
Creative Initiative.

The central leadership was a group of people who lived
quasi- communally in Portola Valley in a place called the Hub.
Jim Burch was quite well-off for example. He had been a very
successful advertising executive for Batten, Barton, Durstine, &
Osborn, I think, BBDO; he had the Standard Oil account, and he
had made a lot of money somehow. He was a very fine person; I
liked all of the people.

But this dinner--! kept getting insights into them. Nobody
ever sat down and told me the real story, I would just pick up
clues. But they invited Julie and me to dinner at the Hub, the
Rathbuns' house, maybe a month or two after the speech at Gunn
High School. Their living arrangement was individual houses--

174

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

beautiful, big houses--in a circle at the end of a street with
open space behind them and a communal building in the center for
meetings, laundry facilities, a big cooking area if they wanted
to get together and eat together. But they all had their
separate dwellings, so they kind of never quite made up their
minds whether they were going to be communal or individual.
[Laughter] But the architecture and the whole design of this
development was a reflection of their philosophy, and it had been
built for the leadership of this organization to live there: the
Rathbuns lived there, the Burches lived there, the Valentines
lived there, Walt Hayes and his wife lived there—Walt was a
lawyer from San Jose. There were six or seven families, but
those are the ones I remember most vividly right now.

Did you pick up a religious component of this group?

Yes. In fact they were explicit about that. They were eclectic.
They picked a little bit from Buddhism, a little bit from
Catholicism; from Christian religions, Moslem religions, Eastern
religions, they picked little bits and pieces and fitted it all
together. I think that's what Rathbun's book is about. I never
could get through it. You know, the Rainbow women were part of
that, remember?

Not [Reverend] Jesse Jackson?

Not Jesse Jackson. It was before Jesse Jackson. They sang
rainbow songs, and they went to Sacramento, and the women all
wore colorful garb and marched around the capitol on the nuclear
issue, by the hundreds. And they were all there on time. It was
too disciplined for my taste. But I had to admire the way they
mustered their energy and their focus, and when they said they'd
do something, they did it, and they did it right, and they were
professional.

So I was telling the story about this dinner. Julie and I
went to dinner down there, and we all sat in a circle with TV
trays. It was buffet style, and then we all sat down. Amelia,
who was a very strong personality, said, "Now, tell us about
yourselves." Now, this is supposed to be a dinner party. I
thought we would get to know each other a little better and have
some chit-chat and tell some stories and see if people like to go
fishing or what they like to do. No, they were going to get
right to the point: how is your marriage? [Laughter] What is
your theory about raising your children? How do you resolve
conflict in your marriage?

I felt like a bug on the end of a pin. So did Julie. Julie
was very uncomfortable; she didn't like it at all. She liked it

175

even less than I did. And it wasn't impolite; it was as though
by being invited into this very sanctified circle of the top
leadership of this organization, they assumed that we would want
to just succumb and be part of the world they lived in- -their
mental and spiritual world- -and that we could all be quite frank
with each other. I think I shot back with some kind of a
question about them. I didn't really answer their questions. I
think Julie and I were having a little problem with our marriage
already by then, unacknowledged but enough so that we didn't want
to talk about it.

Lage: You feel pretty threatened when--

Pesonen: Well, I didn't feel threatened. I think Julie felt threatened.
I just was surprised and a little shocked at the directness of
it. And then I wasn't shocked. This was the way they are; this
was how they had trained themselves to deal with the world, and
it has given them this power to be direct and uncluttered in
their approach to things and in the way they thought, and it was
the power that was helping us get our initiative qualified.
[Laughter] It was a big, beautiful contrast to the intrigue and
small-mindedness of the Koupals, of the world that I had been
dealing with. And with most people you deal with, you run into a
lot of static.

So I admired that quality of theirs, I just didn't
understand its origins, and I was skeptical of its origins. But
I've stayed intrigued by them. I've kind of lost touch with some
of them although I still run into people twenty years later, on
the street, in meetings. It must happen once a month, I'll run
into somebody who was in Gunn High School on that day, and I
won't remember who they were, and they will introduce themselves.
I've had people come up in restaurants and introduce themselves
and say, "I was there on that day in Gunn High School."

Lage: So that was a big moment for them?

Pesonen: It was a big moment for me, too.

Lage: And they went on to do Beyond War, I remember.

Pesonen: They went on to do Beyond War. I sensed, and I think some of

them kind of conceded later, that they were very naive about the
political process, and they were somewhat disappointed about the
kinds of compromises we had to make in the campaign. There was a
period when we believed we could pass the initiative, which was
naive and unrealistic. I never really thought we would pass that
measure, but after this Creative Initiative group came along, I

176

thought, "Well, maybe we have a possibility." We knew it was a
very long shot and we —

Lage: Did you get it qualified right away after they--?

Pesonen: Oh, we got it qualified, yes. I think within a month after that.

[tape interruption]
Pesonen: Well, I don't know that my theories are--

Lage: Well, put it on tape, and we can take it out if, when you read
it, you think it isn't valid.

Pesonen: Well, they struck me as people who had bought completely into the
American Dream early. They went to college; they got married out
of college; they got a suburban home, and they were happy larks.
They had a couple of kids; they had a station wagon in the
driveway, and the wife was busy running kids back and forth to
Little League and school, and shopping, and her coffee klatches
and her minor community activity, and PTA [Parent Teacher
Association). But something was missing; they felt something was
missing. This wasn't what they thought life was going to be like
after they got their career started. And they began to search
for some answers. Out of that process, somewhere the germ was
planted, and this organization started. There have been other
movements responding to the same uneasiness and dissatisfaction.
It is very idealistic; somehow their idealism was out of phase
with the reality they faced.

Lage: It also was a time in the seventies of encounter groups and

counter-culture things, and this is kind of a respectable middle-
class group that couldn't quite fit in to that counter-culture.

Pesonen: I think that's true also.

Lage: But they took on some of its attributes.

Pesonen: I think a lot of people felt they were better off from it even
when they left it. They got some clarity about who they were.

The world really is a messy place, and it is always going to
be a messy place. [laughter] You are always going to be
disappointed if you've got very high ideals about it. I think a
lot of them got wiser, came out of it wiser and better able to
deal with it.

177

An Intense Political Campaign to Pass Proposition 15'

Lage: So you got the initiative qualified.

Pesonen: We got it qualified. Then we had to launch a political campaign.
That was a whole different kettle of fish, and that's where, I
think, the disenchantment started to set in with Creative
Initiative, because the political campaign was a very intense
political campaign. The industry put more money into opposing
that measure than had been put into any measure in the history of
the initiative process in California. I think the realistic
figure — the reported figure was something like five million
dollars and I believe it was really around seven. I don't
remember how I came up with that number, but I was pretty
confident of it at the time.

Lage: They spent more than they reported?

Pesonen: We all probably spent more than we reported. That was the first
campaign under the new measure [the fair campaign practices
measure]. But it was a lot of money. And it was a media
saturation campaign, and we tried to counter that. We ran a real
campaign.

Lage: Did you hire a media firm?

Pesonen: One of the Creative Initiative group gave us a lot of help on

that. I kept quite a bit of control over that, but we had lots
of television. We always searched for the free publicity: the
press conference with some new announcement, or a talk show, or a
debate on public television. I was in I don't know how many of
those things. It seemed like every week I was going off to L.A.
[Los Angeles] to tape some television program or some television
debate or give a speech someplace or speak to a medical group. I
was always giving speeches. And other people were, too. A lot
of these Creative Initiative people were.

Lage: So you felt comfortable turning them loose in that--?

Pesonen: Oh yes. The doctors would talk to doctors' groups, the lawyers
would talk to lawyers ' groups , the engineers would talk to
engineers' groups. Everybody talked.

Lage: That's very effective.

'Proposition 15 (June 1976).

178

Pesonen: Yes. But the campaign lasted about eight months, I guess, and it
got very intense in the last four or five months before the
election in June of '76. It got very intense at that stage. And
money started to come in. We started really raising money.

Lage: From small donors?

Pesonen: From small donors, yes, big donors. Mostly small donors. Lots
and lots. We had a whole direct mail campaign going, and it was
working. We were solvent.

Safe Nuclear Power or No Nuclear Power?

Lage: You said you even began to believe that you might win.

Pesonen: We began to believe that we might win. There were always

problems that arise. I know that [environmentalist David] Dave
Brower, who had founded the Friends of the Earth by then, was
unhappy that we weren't--.

We had compromised our position. The industry took the
strategy to force us to say we were against nuclear power in any
form. They knew that the public still pretty much supported
nuclear power. I think the polls showed that about 60 to 65
percent of the people thought that nuclear power was a very
important source of energy and useful and valuable. If they
could force us to the position of saying that this really was an
antinuclear movement, that we would be on the defensive. We
sensed that, too, so we took the position that all we really
wanted was to make it safe.

Lage: That's the way it was written, after all.

Pesonen: That's the way it was written. Well, you know that's really
duplicitous. In fact, I told an L.A. Times reporter--! 've
forgotten his name now, but he was a good reporter who covered
the campaign very well. We had a kind of a post mortem after it
was over, and I said, "Yes, it really was kind of duplicitous."
And that may have been our problem. People sensed that we were
really against nuclear power, or most of the movement was. Most
of the people involved were fervently against nuclear power.
They were people who liked clear-cut positions, and they believed
it.

Lage: And did Dave Brower not want--?

179

Pesonen: Dave Brower did not want us to just say we were for safe nuclear
power; he wanted us to say that we were for no nuclear power.
And so we had to sort that out with him.

Lage: Did you work closely with the Sierra Club at all?

Pesonen: The Sierra Club was very much involved, yes. Sierra Club

chapters helped circulate petitions and pass resolutions. A lot
of organizations--

Lage: Did you have a steering committee?

Pesonen: We had a steering committee that was very informally set up. I
headed it. I think Jim Burch from Project Survival was on it,
Walt Hayes from Project Survival. By this time we had been
joined by a very effective person, John Geeseman, who is now a
lawyer practicing in San Francisco and was active in the
[Governor Edmund G.] Jerry Brown [Jr.] campaign later. We sort
of picked people based on their ability; I picked people very
much based on their ability.

Lage: But you didn't have a representative from the Sierra Club, a
representative from Friends of the Earth, that kind of thing?

Pesonen: Off and on. The steering committee was not ever formally
designated, I think.

Lage: What happened to the Nader group?

Pesonen: Well, the Nader group was led by Richard Spohn, and Spohn had
wanted to be head of the organization, and I had told him he
couldn't. [Laughter] I didn't trust his judgment. He had done
some really dumb things early on. But he did come around. He
aligned himself with Koupal in that first struggle and then later
we straightened that out. He just lives around the corner here,
and we are good acquaintances now, but it was a little tense
there twenty years ago.

You know, I wish I had a better memory for this kind of
detail. I just don't. I see the big, sweeping panorama of these
events.

Effect of the Warren Legislation on the Campaign

Pesonen: In any event, in the latter days of the campaign, the last two or
three months, this notion that the measure was too radical

180

started to emerge, and Charlie Warren and Jerry Brown raised the
idea of some more responsible legislation. The idea of a
statutory response by the legislature didn't emerge until a few
months before the election.

Lage: Warren was having these extensive hearings, though?

Pesonen: That's right. I forgot about those hearings. Warren had these
big hearings, which were a valuable platform. I don't remember
when he had those hearings.

Lage: I can check the dates but I think they went on in 1975.

Pesonen: Well, that fits now that I think back on it.

Lage: Did they communicate with you?

Pesonen: Oh yes.

Lage: Was there coordination there?

Pesonen: We were in contact with Charlie, and he and I would talk on the
phone all of the time. We presented testimony at the hearings,
and I followed those pretty closely. I had forgotten about that.
I don't know how I would forget about that.

That wasn't the central focus of my energy, but they were an
important aspect of the whole collection of things that were
going on. And they were very valuable hearings. He had a staff
person, [Emilio E., Ill] Gene Varanini, who later went on to be
on the energy commission [Energy Resources Conservation and
Development Commission], I think, who wrote the report, wrote a
very good report.1 And there were reports coming out. Some
group down at Stanford put out a report analyzing the measure and
its economic effect, and we had to respond to these. There was
just a lot of activity. That happens in any initiative; academic
groups put out reports that purport to say what the real meaning
of the measure is in terms of its impact on the economy or the
resource or anything else.

So then the debate emerged in our informal steering
committee of how we should respond to the statutes. There were
three bills that came out of the Warren committee hearings. I
think that was the Assembly Natural Resources Committee

'Reassessment of Nuclear Energy in California: A Policy Analysis of
Proposition 15 and Its Alternatives. California State Assembly, Committee
on Resources, Land Use, and Energy, 1976.

181

[Committee on Resources, Land Use, and Energy]. Should we
support them, or should we oppose them? They were pretty good
bills, and they were patterned after many of the issues that we
had raised in the nuclear initiative: no new plants until there
was a certified solution to the spent fuel disposal problem, and
it did address the insurance issue a little differently--! don't
remember exactly how. They addressed most of the issues.

Lage: I think one of the differences was they didn't deal with existing
plants .

Pesonen: Right, they just dealt with future plants.

Lage: Whereas yours was going to cut back existing plants.

Pesonen: No, ours was prospective only, too, I think.

Lage: No, I think if it wasn't certified safe, then the level of
production of existing plants was to be cut back.

Pesonen: Oh, that's right. They had to phase back their power levels.

Lage: Yes.

Pesonen: Yes, that's right. The legislation didn't touch existing plants.

Lage: No. And I think they didn't deal with the Price-Anderson Act
quite so directly because they felt the state couldn't--

Pesonen: It would probably be preempted. But they did address a lot of
the issues we had raised and that were at the center of the
debate over the nuclear safeguards measure. So we had to decide
what's our strategy when it comes to the bills? Do we support
them? Do we support their being introduced? If they are
introduced what is our position on them?

I took the position that they were a big step forward, that
there was a great risk we weren't going to pass the initiative
and that we should support them, and that in any event it was a
political matter. We had to support them because we had already
elected our strategy: that we were going to be for safe nuclear
power. If we had elected a strategy up front to be against any
nuclear power, we could have taken the position with integrity
that the bills were weak compromises and didn't go far enough and
were misleading. But we couldn't take that position because of
the strategy we had elected for our own measure, which was the
same strategy, watered down in the legislation. It was just a
difference in details.

182

So we did announce that we would support the legislation,
and they passed very quickly.1

Lage: Do you think the legislation passed because of the fear of the
initiative?

Pesonen: I am convinced that they wouldn't even have been introduced but
for the initiative, and that's what Charlie told us three years
earlier when we had gone to see him and asked him if he would
introduce legislation. He had said, "I can't do anything without
the initiative." Well, with the initiative bubbling as the
central environmental question in the state at that time, he
could hold hearings, and they would draw a lot of attention, and
they would catch the attention of his fellow members of the
legislature, and it would create the momentum for their passage.

Jerry Brown was scared to death of the initiative. I think
he was sympathetic to it, and he followed it all the time. He
called me once a week, "How are you doing? What do your polls
tell you?" He was very interested in it. But he saw a safe way
out by this more responsible response, so he pushed it also. He
and Warren, together, so you had the executive branch and the
leadership of the key committee in the legislature, and all over
the front pages of the newspapers every day was something going
on about nuclear power and an agitated public and constituency in
all of these legislators' districts. So it was easy to get the
three bills through as the responsible alternative. Then
immediately the governor took the position that it was not
necessary to pass the initiative because the legislature had
finally done the responsible thing.

Lage: And what did that do to your campaign?

Pesonen: 1 don't think it made any difference in the campaign. The people
in the campaign felt that it undercut our support. I doubt it.
I think most of the people who voted for it, for Proposition 15
or against it, were unaware of those bills. I don't think they
made up their minds based on that kind of analysis, not a
significant number of voters did. We would have lost anyway; I
am convinced of that. There is no question. What did we get, 40
percent of the vote?

'A.B. 2820, 1975-1976 Reg. Sess., Cal. Stat., ch. 194 (1976)
A.B. 2821, 1975-1976 Reg. Sess., Cal. Stat., ch. 195 (1976)
A.B. 2822, 1975-1976 Reg. Sess., Cal. Stat., ch. 196 (1976).

183

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

I think it was about that. [The vote was 32.5 percent in favor
of Proposition 15.] Were people disillusioned, your Project
Survival people?

They were disillusioned.

Because of the failure of the initiative?

Yes. I think they believed it could win.
were ever realistic about it.

But I don't think they

They didn't take satisfaction in seeing that the pressure
probably led to some fairly decent legislation?

I think some of the more wise ones did. But a lot of people just
saw life in "you win or you lose" terms. I didn't. I was
exhausted. I was glad it was over. [laughter] But I don't
think there is any question that the bills did not affect the
outcome of the measure, but that the bills wouldn't have existed
but for the measure. So, when you go back and look back at the
strategy we devised in Henry Kendall's living room four years
before, it worked. And it worked just fine. I mean, our plan to
a tee. It was just a very wasteful way to do it, but there was
no other way to do it. At least, I didn't know of any other way
to do it. We got what we wanted, or we got a lot of what we
wanted. And it did stop any further nuclear development in
California. There hasn't been any since.

Inspiring and Assisting Efforts in Other States

Pesonen: Now, in the meantime, this Proposition 15 had inspired other

measures, similar measures in other states. In Oregon, Montana.
Missouri; there were five or six states that had measures. We
were on in June, and they were on in November.

Lage: Did you get a lot of calls from those states?

Pesonen: We got a lot of calls. More than that, we got requests for money
because a very interesting thing happened: the curve of
contributions to the Proposition 15 campaign just kept on rising
as people began to hear and understand the issue and get our
message. So the biggest day of funds we received, the most
amount of money per day, came in the day of the election,
[laughter] We ended up with a surplus of about one hundred
thousand dollars.

184

Lage: That's really unheard of.

Pesonen: We paid all of our bills, and then we had all of this money.

There weren't any restrictions, except that we couldn't use it
for personal gain or anything like that; we had to use it in ways
that were consistent with what it had been raised for. You
couldn't give it back, you didn't know where all of the people
were, and the money all got commingled. So we decided to give it
to these other measures, and we had this continued steering
committee. It was Calif ornians for Nuclear Safeguards.

By this time it had taken on a more formal structure. It
had a representative from CalPIRG, from the Nader organization,
from the Sierra Club, from the Friends of the Earth, from ten or
fifteen organizations, and some of the people who had been active
in the Proposition 15 campaign: Roy Alper from CalPIRG, Dwight
Cocke was there. And we would have meetings pretty frequently
right after the election to decide how to spend this money. I
think we funded a little research job. And of course once the
word got out that we had some money, everybody came around
looking for a piece of it, so we got rid of it pretty quick,
[laughter] I didn't want to be in charge of piecing money out to
too many worthy causes. We gave almost all of it to Oregon,
Montana and Missouri.

Jerry Brown and a Debate on Nuclear Power in San Francisco. 1976
ti

Lage: Julie told me about a debate that you had at the Zen Center [in
San Francisco] to inform Jerry Brown about nuclear power.

Pesonen: Well, that was before the measure.
Lage: Oh, before the measure even came?

Pesonen: That was--or very early on in the measure. I know it was before
"75. I'm almost positive it was before "75. I may have to go
back and look at that diary, which started in '75.

Anyway, I got the word that the governor- -let's see. When
was he elected? He was elected in '74, wasn't he?

Lage: Right. At the same time that the Fair Political Practices Act
was passed.

Pesonen: Well, Jerry wanted to know more about the nuclear power issue.

We got the word that the governor wanted a real presentation. It

185

wasn't at the Zen Center, it was held over at the UC [University
of California, Berkeley] Extension on Laguna Street in San
Francisco. He contacted the organization which was very active
in opposing the measure—it must have been after the measure was
qualified—called, what was it called?

Lage: Calif ornians for Economic Balance?

Pesonen: [Calif ornians for] Environmental and Economic Balance. Yes. And
there was a fellow who was very active in that, Michael Peevey.
Anyway, he told them he wanted them to bring some people who were
pronuclear who were good spokespeople, and he told me to round up
two or three very knowledgeable people on the antinuclear side.
So I got Henry Kendall- -Henry agreed to come—who else did we
have? Henry Kendall was our principle spokesperson, and on the
other side was a fellow named Bob Budnitz, who was a nuclear
engineer who works out at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

It went on pretty much all day. It was set up in this room
with a long table. The governor was there with his entourage:
[Special Assistant to the Governor] Jacques Barzaghi and I think
even [Chief of Staff] Gray Davis was there.

Lage: Had you met the governor before?

Pesonen: I think I had. I hadn't really spent any time with him. I know
how I heard about it. He contacted me through Richard Baker, who
was the roshi of the Zen Center. Richard was a personal
acquaintance, not from Zen particularly, but his wife and Julie
had gone to high school together in Minneapolis, and he had come
to see me about the Bodega campaign when he was working for UC
Extension before he even went into Zen. He was very interested
in the counter-culture movements, and he had contacted me in the
early sixties, and we had remained acquaintances because he was
married to this friend of Julie's. He is a very interesting
person, very charismatic kind of personality.

The governor had gravitated to him, and he was at that time
very close to the governor, supposedly. The governor had this
entourage of people like [informal advisor to Governor Brown]
Stewart Brand, Dick Baker; far out thinkers of one kind or
another. I never was part of that world. I like to go fishing,
and I'm too much of a country boy, I guess. I don't know. I
never thought that way, and I don't think it has to do with self-
image; I just don't think that way. [laughter]

186

So at the end of this meeting, Henry Kendall gave the most--
I wish I had a tape of it--the most eloquent summing up, a
powerfully persuasive statement. He is a very fine speaker, and
he is a man of great integrity, and he looks like a New England
physicist. He has this craggy New England face; he is very
handsome, very well spoken, and he is very knowledgeable.
Knowledgeable enough that he got the Nobel Prize last year with
two other people for some obscure corner of physics. At the end,
Baker sidled up to me and said, "The governor would like you and
Henry to join us for dinner over at my house," and that was just
right across the street I think. He lived in a spacious flat
over the Zen Center.

So there were maybe eight or ten people there, sitting
around on the floor. The governor, Henry Kendall, me, the
Bakers, Julie was with us — I think Julie came over by then—and
three or four other people. And we just sat and talked into the
evening. The governor didn't say very much. Kendall did a lot
of talking. The governor was just curious.

Lage: This was after the debate?

Pesonen: This was after the debate had gone on. I knew we won the debate.

Lage: The other side didn't look too good?

Pesonen: No, they were agitated, they weren't very organized, I didn't
find them persuasive—of course, I wouldn't necessarily. But
they weren't invited to dinner. [laughter] And we were.

Lage: So the talk went on about nuclear power?

Pesonen: The talk went on about a lot of other things, too. It became
more of a social evening.

Lage: Did anyone ask about your marriage? [laughter]

Pesonen: No, it was just the opposite of Creative Initiative. That's, I
think, the beginning of my relationship with the governor.

Lage: But he didn't talk much?

Pesonen: He didn't talk very much, no. He asked a few questions. He

mostly listened. There was a lot of wine, everybody got happy,
and it was a party. A party of people who were on an emotional
high from this day. It had been a very significant day. I mean,
you don't get your hands on a governor all day very often,
particularly one who's kind of interesting like Jerry, and win
him over to your position. So this was a victory that was

187

Lage:

Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

pregnant with future possibility. And I didn't miss that part.
I was not just in a state of elation over the success of that
day; I saw this as an investment in access to power we needed for
what we wanted to do in the future. I never thought it would
lead to [the Department of] Forestry, but I'm sure that it did.
But he liked me. I think he respected the way that I thought and
talked. He never says those things to people, you know. You
have to draw your inferences, and I may be flattering myself, but
I apparently made a significant enough impression on him that
day, partly because of the people I was associated with, that it
led to other things in his administration later on.

But I gather from what you said that he didn't make a commitment
to sign on to Proposition 15, or an antinuclear stance.

He didn't expressly, but his conduct constituted a commitment.
But there was no policy discussion or--?
No, no. He didn't have to.

That's interesting. It's true you don't often get a day with the
governor to talk about a broad issue like that.

Pesonen: He was having fun, too. You could tell he was enjoying himself.
He had this strange entourage, you know. That's when I first met

Barzaghi, this Svengali that still hangs around with him.
What's he like?

Very cynical. I don't really know Barzaghi. He's mysterious.
He's got this sexy French accent, this very lean, wolf like
quality about him. He appears to be a deep thinker, and every
motion, gesture, touch, turn of his clothes looks as though it is
constructed to project the image of a deep thinker. He utters--!
can't think of the words I want. His utterances all have a sense
of mystery about them. They are ambiguous. It is not clear what
the profundity is.

The implied profundity.

Yes. I'll think of the word after you leave, I'm sure. Cryptic
is close. He will come up later, I'm sure.

I think we have pretty well covered the Proposition 15 campaign.
I think so.

We'll go to forestry next time?

188

VII MANAGING CALIFORNIA'S FORESTS IN THE JERRY BROWN
ADMINISTRATION

[Interview 6: April 2, 1992] ti

Serving on the State Board of Forestry. 1977-1979

Lage: We want to get into your career in forestry, the California State
Board of Forestry and the Department of Forestry. Let's start
with the state board. No, let's start before the state board.
Had you been involved in any forestry issues before you were
appointed to the board?

Pesonen: Not very much. I was involved with the state Board of Forestry
back in the early sixties when I worked for [Executive Director
David R.] Dave Brower at the Sierra Club. That was part of my
unshaped responsibility that he gave me. My title was
conservation editor, but I did all kinds of things, and one part
of the job was to represent the club before the state Board of
Forestry in the very early years — in my early years, anyway. And
then after I went into law practice in 1969 I kind of kept an eye
on it. I was asked by Henry Vaux to serve on a study committee
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS]
on forest practices. That was probably around 1975 and we did a
little report for AAAS. I had kept in touch with [Chairman of
Board of Forestry Henry] Vaux, Hank Vaux,1 and [Dean of School of
Forestry] John Zivnuska over the years, but I wouldn't appear or
sue the board or have any litigation involving the board.

'See Henry J. Vaux, "Forestry in the Public Interest: Education,
Economics, State Policy, 1933-1983," an oral history conducted in 1986 by
Ann Lage, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1987.

189

Lage: You didn't have anything to do with the new legislation on forest
practices in the seventies—the Z'Berg-Nejedly Act [California
Forest Practice Act of 1973] ?'

Pesonen: No. I might have been consulted on the phone about something,
but I wasn't an active participant.

Lage: How did the appointment come about to the state board?

Pesonen: Well, Hank Vaux was chairman by then, and I guess he consulted
with [Secretary for Resources] Huey [Johnson]. There was an
opening for a public member who would be acceptable to the
environmental community. They knew who I was and—whether Vaux
planted the idea with Huey or whether Huey came up with it
himself I don't know.

Lage: Did you know Huey?

Pesonen: I knew Huey from his Trust for Public Land days. I just got
offered the position. It was part time, and it sounded like
something interesting. There were a lot of forestry issues
involving the Redwood National Park that were in the press a lot.
So I thought it would be kind of fun and a change of pace.

Lage: Is that a paid appointment?

Pesonen: I think you get $50 a day for attending one of those all-day
meetings.

Lage: You must have had additional work aside from your all-day
meetings.

Pesonen: There was a per-diem kind of thing. It didn't amount to a hill
of beans. It was not a perquisite. I didn't take it for the
perks. I lost money on the whole time away from my practice to
come to these meetings. So I don't think there was any
significant amount of money involved.

Lage: I just wondered what kind of monetary arrangement they made.

'A.B. 227, 1973-1974 Reg. Sess., Cal. Stat., ch. 880 (1973).

190

The Redwood Park Issue

Lage: Well, when you came on the board, your first meeting was highly
focused on the redwood park issue [May 1977]. Do you remember
much about that?

Pesonen: I remember that meeting, but I don't remember in particular that
it was the first meeting. It was close to the first meeting. It
was very early on, but I think I had been to one or two meetings
before that.

Well, the redwood park was the forestry environmental issue
at that time. Congress had passed the Redwood [National] Park
bill in 1968 but it was not an adequate park. The park covered
Redwood Creek, but it only covered the narrow strip up the creek
called the worm. On a map it just looked like a worm meandering
up the creek. The surrounding watershed was vulnerable to
continued logging. It was just plain that that park wouldn't
amount to anything if the entire watershed didn't have some
protection, whether incorporation in the park or limitations on
logging different from the regular forest practice rules, which
was under consideration by the Board of Forestry when I first got
there. And there was a bill in Congress to extend the park
substantially. [Senator Alan] Al Cranston--! think it was
Cranston--and [Representative Phillip] Phil Burton were carrying
that bill. There was a lot of interest in it, but it hadn't
passed yet.

In the meantime, Louisiana Pacific and Simpson [lumber
companies]--! think those were the two principal companies, maybe
Georgia Pacific, too--had filed with the department very large
timber harvest plans to log in that watershed. It was very clear
that their strategy was to get as much timber out of there as
they could before we got it condemned by the federal government
for addition to the park. So the problem was to figure out a
legally sound theory for holding up those timber harvest plans
until Congress could act on the expansion of the park and fund
it. It wasn't very clear in the law how we could do that.

Lage: You had to go by the prescribed forest practice law?
[tape interruption]

Pesonen: Well, it wasn't very clear how the board had authority to deny a
plan. I think the director [of the Department of Forestry] had
denied the plans, the companies had appealed to the board--

191

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Because you only considered these issues on appeals from the
decisions of the director, as I understand it?

Yes. The question was whether we could deny the companies'
timber harvest plans. I think [Board of Forestry member Phillip
S.] Phil Berry and I spun out a theory that was not complete
hokum to deny the plans for some interim period because there had
been actual action by Congress. The bill had passed one house;
it just hadn't passed the other house, and that was enough, we
thought, to fit into certain language in the rules that gave the
board authority.

That was a big hearing; there were a lot of people there. I
thought it was a lot of fun. It gave me an opportunity to
explain what we were doing, explain the limitations on what our
power was. And I took that seriously. It wasn't just fun. But
it was very clear that the administration and a majority of the
board wanted to protect that watershed because we were quite sure
that Congress was going to pass the measure pretty quickly and
fund it. You know, you got the usual arguments from the industry
that tens of thousands of jobs would be lost forever. You hear
that all of the time from the industry.

You are still hearing it.

You still hear it in the ancient forests controversy. I think
their economics is shaky, but even if they are not shaky, the
jobs are temporary and the park is permanent. I was an
acknowledged environmentalist, and I was put on the board with
that in mind. I was a public member; I wouldn't say I had a
constituency, but I certainly had a sympathy for what the Sierra
Club and Save the Redwoods League and other people wanted to do.
So if, legally, we could do what we wanted to do, we would. If
we couldn't do it legally, we wouldn't.

You said there were a lot of people at the hearing,
both sides?

Were they on

Both sides. It was a big hearing.

Was it pretty intense?

It was lively. It wasn't angry.

Somehow I would envision a lot of anger at that point.

I don't remember it as being an angry meeting.

192

Chairman Henry Vaux and Board Members

Lage: How about on other issues among the board members? Was the

cooperation among the board members good? It seems like there
was a balance of people.

Pesonen: Well, it was, by the time I got on the board, dominated by Jerry
Brown appointees, and I think the cooperation on the board was
very good. I attribute that to Hank Vaux's style. Hank Vaux was
a wonderful chairman, and he had a great skill at finding
consensus among board members. He had a good, crafty sense of
pace of how things were to be done, and of process. And he is a
wise, thoughtful person and a very good leader. He was hard
working, and I respected his abilities. I didn't always agree
with him, but I never felt that he was unfair.

Lage: He devoted a great deal of time to that, it seems.

Pesonen: Oh, he devoted an enormous amount of time to it. It was almost a
full-time job for him.

Lage: I interviewed him on the Board of Forestry so we talked about it
quite a bit. He seemed very process-oriented, to be sure that
process was just correct so it wouldn't be challenged later in
courts and--was that something you discussed with him?

Pesonen: That's the way a lawyer thinks, too. But it's also the way a
very skilled administrator thinks, and Hank was a skilled
administrator. It's also the fairest way to do things. Process
is an established set of agreements among people about how things
ought to be done to assure that when the result is reached, that
everybody who has participated in it feels that the result was
fairly reached even if they don't agree with the result. That's
one of the problems we are seeing now in the resource agencies
under [Governor George] Deukmejian on a state level and under
[President Ronald] Reagan and [President George] Bush on the
federal level. To the extent that they can get away with it,
they have very little respect for process. That's why you find
in the [United States] Forest Service now, for example, rebellion
among resource staff people because they think the process is
being distorted.

Lage: So was Vaux able to bring along those members of the board who
were industry representatives?

Pesonen: Yes. It was a very fine board. The leading industry

representative was [Henry] Hank Trobitz who, for a long time, had
been a principal of the Simpson Timber Company in Eureka.

193

Trobitz was just a gentleman of the old-school. He didn't like a
lot of things that were happening, but he didn't personalize
things. He knew he was in the minority. [laughter]

Lage: That's right. That would give you a certain position.

Pesonen: He knew he was in a minority so he made his points and he made
them well, and sometimes he prevailed if it wasn't a matter of
fundamental policy. He was a decent guy. I liked him. I had a
lot of respect for him.

Lage: Any other on the board that were--

Pesonen: Well, there was Virginia Harwood, who was a Democrat. She and
her husband. She was married to Bud Harwood of the Harwood
Lumber Company up in Branscomb. Virginia was a smart lady, and
she was put on there because she was one of the few Democrats, I
think, in the redwood region.

Lage: And she was a Brown appointee?

Pesonen: She was a Brown appointee. She ended up with Trobitz more often
than not, but she also was a nice person and didn't personalize
her political disagreements and her policy disagreements with the
other members of the board. And the other members of the board
were pretty congenial. There was Phil Berry; there was myself;
there was [University of California professor of Geology] Clyde
Wahrhaftig, who's just a sweet old man and a wonderful guy. And
he's a very sound scientist and teacher. Then there was a woman
who was active in the Sierra Club from southern California,
Cecile Rosenthal. Let's see, who else was on there? Richard
Wilson, who is now the director of the department.

Lage: Was he a Brown appointee? He was a Republican.

Pesonen: He. was a Republican, but he was a Brown appointee, I think.

Lage: What did you think of him?

Pesonen: I liked him. He's very independent minded. He didn't fit as
well into any of the two camps, if you can say there were two
camps on that board although that's an exaggeration. I don't
think he spent a lot of time on the board. He had things going
on in his personal life. He had his ranch up there in Covelo,
and there were certain issues where he cared a lot and certain
issues where he just didn't care at all.

Lage:

What is his position now?

194

He

Pesonen: He is director of the department.
Lage: Of forestry?

Pesonen: Yes. It's now called [the Department of] Forestry and Fire,
was just appointed a couple of months ago by [Governor Pete]
Wilson.

Lage: So I hope he's interested in forestry now.

Pesonen: Well, he is. Very much. He got appointed during a turbulent
time when the Grand Accord [legislation governing timber
practices on old-growth forests on private lands] had been
through the legislature and then was vetoed by the governor. It
caused a great turmoil and in the wake of Proposition 130 and 138
[both bond acts dealing with forest protection and forest
harvesting] in 1990,' there was another initiative being
circulated, that legislation is still held up in the legislature
right now by [Speaker of the Assembly] Willie Brown, probably for
reasons completely extraneous to the merits of the legislation.
And it's divided the environmental community because of the way
it was put together. It's a mess. And poor Richard Wilson is
right in the middle of it. He walked into a hurricane.

Lage: It's a wonderful title, Grand Accord, but it doesn't seem quite
appropriate right now.

Pesonen: Well, it's a grand mess right now. I don't remember who else was
on the board, but they were a congenial board. Clearly it was
the length and shadow of Hank Vaux's style.

Regulating Non-Point Sources of Pollution

Lage: Now, you worked on the best management practices for the non-
point sources of pollution? What was that?

Pesonen: Well, shortly after I got on the board, Hank asked me if I would
handle a subcommittee, a citizens advisory committee under
Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.2

'Propositions 130 and 138 (November 1990)
290 Stat. 377 (1976).

195

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act addresses
essentially two kinds of pollution: point sources and non-point
sources. Point sources are pipes that dump things into streams
and water courses. Non-point sources are more diffuse: runoff
from streets in cities, runoff from wildlands irrigation and
other things. Under the act the development of rules for control
of non-point sources to meet the goals of the act was delegated
to the states in the first place. And in California, that would
be the Water Resources Control Board. The Water Resources
Control Board broke that subject up based on the source of the
non-point pollution. Timber harvesting was one major source that
they identified and then they delegated to the Board of Forestry,
or they contracted with the Board of Forestry, the job of
developing those rules which ultimately would have to be approved
by the Water Resources Control Board, but they didn't have the
staff or expertise, so they thought, to do the work. That was
delegated to the Board of Forestry and I was appointed to be in
charge of that process.

We set up a committee called the BMPSAC--Best Management
Practices Advisory Committee- -and it had all kinds of people on
it, people who came from the timber industry, came from
professional licensed foresters, the environmental community,
people with interests from the North Coast Regional Water Quality
Control Board. It was a committee of fifteen or twenty people,
and we started developing the rules.

Now, how did this relate to the subcommittee?
advisory committee and then also the--

You had a citizens

Well, the citizen's advisory committee was advisory to this
subcommittee of the board. Of course, the idea was to get as
much buy-in on whatever rules we come up with ultimately, so that
they could then be adopted by the Board of Forestry and
transmitted with their recommendation to the Water Resources
Control Board for adoption in compliance with the act.

Am I right in remembering that you were making the forest
practice rules sort of take in this--

Yes. The notion was that once best management practices were
adopted to comply with section 208, they would be folded in, by
amendment, to the forest practice rules so that the forest
practice rules would incorporate these best management practices.

Lage: So you'd just have one set of rules?
Pesonen: You would have one set of rules.

196

Well, that never got completed while I was on the board. It
was a much more lengthy and controversial topic than we thought.
And it is. It's a very difficult subject to get your hands on,
at least under the Z'berg-Nejedly Act as it then existed and the
forest practice rules as they then were in place. And, of
course, I sensed that there was a lot of obstructionism on the
part of the industry. Industry representatives didn't want any
changes .

Lage: Was that evident on your advisory committee?

Pesonen: On the advisory committee. Any change in those rules would be

more restrictive. There was just no way out of it, and they knew
that.

Lage: And yet you were under federal mandate?

Pesonen: Well, yes, but there wasn't much of a timetable on it. And I

didn't understand the process well enough at the beginning, and I
had an educational learning curve to go through myself. I had
two learning curves. One was managing an administrative
committee like that, which I had never had much experience with,
and the other was understanding the rules in that level of detail
and being able to justify that whatever amendments we were to
propose had some sound analytical basis. That was just a lot of
work. There were staff of the department who were stretched thin
doing other things, so there wasn't a lot of urgency about it, or
at least it didn't seem to move in much more than a glacial pace,
and that may have been my fault. I was busy running a law
practice and trying to do this--

Lage: My immediate reaction is that it's a tremendous thing to
undertake as a private citizen--

Pesonen: It was.

Lage: --more or less volunteering, doing your civic duties.

Pesonen: It was a lot more than I thought it would be when I accepted Hank
Vaux's flattering offer. [laughter]

Lage: Were the other portions of this section 208 examination also done
by citizen committees, do you think?

Pesonen: I think it depended on the nature of the source that was being
addressed. I don't know who was responsible for developing the
rules for agriculture, for example, if anybody. I doubt it would
be the Department of Agriculture. It might have been the
Department of Water Resources.

197

Lage: Did running that advisory committee help prepare you for your
work in the department?

Pesonen: Oh yes. All of that. Everything you do- -everything I do--it
seems to me, feeds into the next step. I never stop learning.
I've learned from mistakes more often than anything else. And
I've made some big ones. Sure it was a learning experience. It
was an exposure to so-called participatory democracy, a
formalized form of participatory democracy, and it's a process
that's used all of the time in government.

Lage: More recently. More in the last twenty years.

Pesonen: I think that's probably true. I'm not a student of that history,
of that process, but it can be used as a way of seeing that
nothing gets done as much as it can be a device to see that
things get done that will get institutionalized and stay.

Lage: That people will buy into it?

Pesonen: People will buy into it. And it's just as effective for one as

for the other depending on what the committee really wants to do.
What I wanted was for our rules to be adopted, but I didn't have
enough time to complete the process.

Anything else we should mention on this? Who took it over after
you left?

I don't know.

It did get done?

Yes, I guess it did get done.

At some point.

At some point it got done. I think it's still kicking around. I
think there are still problems getting it incorporated into the
forest practice bills. But I didn't pay a lot of attention to it
after I became director of the department.

Lage: So it was more a responsibility of the board, rather than the
department?

Pesonen: Well, the department had some staff support for the BMPSAC and to
the board, but I just had so many other things to do. I figured
it was in good hands, and there was nothing to be added by my
sticking my finger into it. I had bigger fish to fry.

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

198

Lage: Is that relationship between the board and the department an easy
one? I mean, here you have seen both sides of it.

Pesonen: It depends on who the director is and who the members of the
board are.

Lage: Was [Lewis] Moran the director when you were on the board?

Pesonen: I replaced Moran. He retired. I think his relations with the
board were--I wouldn't say strained because he was--he was an
old-time bureaucrat. I mean, he was a survivor. He was like
[Charles] Charlie Fullerton at [the Department of] Fish and Game.
They were real survivors. They didn't want to see too much
change. They were too much a part of the organization; they had
come up from the ranks. They were susceptible to what happens to
anybody who is around too long in any organization: they had too
many connections, too many friends, too many debts, too many
skeletons in their closets, I suspect. And they get tired.
Pretty soon they'd get their eyes set on retirement, and they
just want to get there. As little trouble as possible is the
best way to get there. So Moran didn't do very much. I think
that that is what I was told, and that's what it appeared to me
when I got there. On the other hand, he didn't actively obstruct
what the administration wanted to do and the board wanted to do.
He did his job, but he didn't have any great agenda for change.

Lage: Before we get into the department, do you have any other--! think
we have covered most of the thoughts I had on the board, but is
there anything that you want to add or particular meetings that
you remember or issues that--I mean, we haven't, by any means,
addressed the full range of issues that you were involved with.

Pesonen: Oh, no. There were lots of other issues, but the Redwood

National Park thing was certainly the highlight, and that came
right at the beginning, and then there was the 208 committee.
There were lots of things going on all the time, but--

Lage: Well, the complete review of the forest practice rules sounded
like that was a major undertaking, from my interview with Henry
Vaux.

Pesonen: We had a few appeals that were controversial. The rules were

under review in a number of respects. There was a major set of
amendments to the rules for the Coastal Protection Act.1 I have
forgotten the exact title of those rules, but they were

'S.B. 1277, California Coastal Act of 1976, 1975-1976 Reg. Sess.,
Stat., ch. 1330 (1976).

Cal.

199

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

amendments, major amendments, to the rules within the coastal
zone and that happened while I was on the board and that took a
lot of time and study.

But I have to say that I probably wasn't as conscientious a
board member, except on the 208 issue, as I might have been, as
some other board members were. It really was an intrusion on my
law practice. The kind of law practice I had was not one where I
was a major partner in a good firm and had lots of time to be a
figurehead. I had to work. I had to try cases. And I felt the
board was an intrusion on that, and I continued to do it out of a
sense of public responsibility. But I wouldn't look back on it
and say that I was as conscientious a board member as some others
might be. I mean, I picked up the agenda on the bus riding up
there and I read it on the ride. I didn't spend much time in
between times except on the 208 stuff.

I'll bet any number of board members had to do that unless they
were in a senior position, or retired.

I think that's true of a lot of citizen boards. I have certainly
found it to be true when I was manager of the East Bay Regional
Parks District. The board members didn't pay much attention
until they got to a board meeting unless they had a particular
issue that they had been stirred up about by some constituents.

So you had Henry Vaux, who put a tremendous amount of time into
it, and he was able to get staff for the Board of Forestry for
the first time.

Pesonen: Yes, and I trusted Vaux to keep things going on the right track.
I had a lot of confidence in him.

Appointment as Director of the Department of Forestry. 1979

Lage: Let's leave the board and go to the department. Now how did that
appointment come about? Are you aware of how your name came up?

Pesonen: I don't know how that came about. I know that I had been thought
of as director sometime earlier when Claire Dedrick was secretary
for resources before Huey. Moran was thinking of retiring, or
maybe Dedrick was thinking of replacing Moran. This was probably
two years earlier. I think it was right about the time I got on
the board. It might even have been before I got on the board.

Lage: Were you aware of it at the time, that you were being considered?

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Pesonen: Well, she called me up one day. I knew her. She had been with

the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, and I had known her from the
antinuclear days.

Lage: Had she been involved in that antinuclear movement?
Pesonen: Somewhat. She and her husband.

II

Pesonen: Let's see. When did Jerry Brown come into office?
Lage: January of '75.
Pesonen: Well, this was about--

Lage: And Claire Dedrick was hung in effigy by the lumber people soon
after she came in.

Pesonen: Yes, but she was his first secretary for resources. Initially, I
think she wanted a younger, more active person as forestry
department director. Moran was playing out his last days with
the department before retirement. He knew that. So I spent an
afternoon, and then we went to dinner with her, and then I didn't
hear anything more from her. I guess she decided she would stick
with Moran.

Lage: As she stuck with Charlie Fullerton?

Pesonen: As she stuck with Charlie Fullerton. And I didn't pursue it.
[tape interruption]

Pesonen: Well, how did it happen? Huey called me in, I guess it was March
of 1979, and just flat out — you know, he doesn't mince any words
--just wanted to know if I'd like to be director of the
department, and could I come right away? And it might have even
been February when he called. I said, "Well, I have some things
to wind down in my law practice." He wasn't happy about that. I
didn't hesitate.

Lage: You immediately—well, you said earlier you were kind of ready to
get out.

Pesonen: I was looking for a big change, for a lot of reasons I have

already discussed. So I told my partners about it, and they were
not happy about it. I said I would have to wind down what I had.
Huey was unhappy about that, but he was willing to wait. I am
sure he had talked to the governor about it. He wouldn't have

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done such a thing without talking to the governor, and it might
even have been partly the governor's idea for all I know.

Lage: Because you'd had that meeting with the governor on the nuclear
issue earlier?

Pesonen: I knew the governor from that, and the governor had stayed in
touch with me. There had been a campaign against some nuclear
power plants in Kern County, the Wasco plant which was a huge,
absolutely huge, nuclear facility proposed by the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power [LADWP] , to be built near the town
of Wasco outside Bakersfield. There was a citizen's initiative
to stop it, cut off its water supply. Without water it couldn't
have any cooling towers, and it wouldn't be possible. They were
afraid the water would be diverted from agriculture.

Larry Levine was managing the campaign against that plant.
I forgot to mention Larry in our last session about the nuclear
initiative, and I should have because he was the hired
strategist, the hired campaign manager, he and a guy named
[Robert] Bob Jeans. Larry was the press manager. And he is a
campaign consultant in southern California. He handles school
board candidates and local congressional and supervisor
candidates. He makes his living doing that. And he's a
wonderful guy. We just really got to know each other and liked
each other a lot in the Proposition 15 [Nuclear Safeguards Act,
June 1976] campaign. And he was managing the campaign for the
farmers in Kern County, and he was keeping me posted every day
about how things were going.

Lage: Interesting that you had the farmers organized against nuclear
power .

Pesonen: Well, the farmers whose water would be lost. And Larry could

tell that story better than I could. It was a very interesting
campaign. The governor watched it very closely, almost daily.
He was calling me every other day, I think, to see how the vote
was going to go because he had already positioned himself as an
antinuclear candidate, and it was very important to him that that
initiative succeed in Kern County. It would buttress his
position. It would justify it. I can't think of quite the right
word I want, but if it lost, he would see it as a blow to his own
position. And it won.

So I had been in touch with the governor as sort of an
information source about the Wasco plant campaign through '75, I
think, or through '76 or '77. So we knew each other. It was a
first-name basis, and I knew Huey. And it just happened. I
mean, I didn't go through a long interview process, I didn't file

202

an application, I didn't send in a resume, I didn't do anything,
it was just my reputation.

Lage: Did you have a meeting with the governor and Huey to talk about —

Pesonen: It was just a done deal. When I said "yes" on the phone, it was
a done deal.

Lage: But before you got into the job, was there any discussion of
where the department should go or--

Pesonen: No. I don't recall meeting with the governor before that at all.
Lage: So it was just up to you?

Secretary for Resources Huey Johnson

Pesonen: It was just up to me. Well, no. Where the department was going
to go was a matter of great interest to Huey, but I never
discussed it with the governor before my appointment.

That was April 1979, so it was just thirteen years ago.
Well, anybody who goes into a position like that has to sort of
get the lay of the land, you know? Who your staff is, what the
history of things is, what are the underlying issues, how is the
place organized, what's its real mission and what does it
perceive its mission to be? I set out to just kind of keep my
ear to the ground and go around and talk to a lot of people. I
called a staff meeting right away, and I recall that staff
meeting.

The top level of staff was called the executive advisory
group or something, EAC. In other words, anybody who was a
ranger IV and above, a regional chief and above. And I held up a
blank piece of paper and I said, "This is my agenda right now. I
want to find out from you what this department does, how it does
it."

Huey left me alone at the beginning. He didn't come right
in and say, "Here's what I want you to do with the department."
He had his weekly staff meetings, and they were very episodic.
It was very hard to figure out what Huey's plan was.

Lage: Did you know that he had a plan?

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Pesonen: I wasn't sure he had one. [laughter] The staff meetings were
amusing.

Lage: This was with all of the departments within the Resources Agency?

Pesonen: This was all of the Resources Agency heads: conservation, fish
and game, water resources --

Lage : Parks ?

Pesonen: --parks, State Lands Commission, Water Resources Control Board,
and then there were a couple of little bodies of one kind or
another, but they were all part of the Resources Agency. And
there were maybe twelve to fifteen people in Huey's Monday
morning staff meetings. There was never a written agenda. There
was usually some issue in the legislature, something the governor
had said. It was political, it was policies. Sometimes it was
just Huey holding forth about the world in his swinging chair,
and the rest of us sitting in these creaky chairs that he brought
up from Mexico.

Lage: Was this his chair that hangs from the ceiling?

Pesonen: He had two swinging basket chairs from the ceiling, and if you
met with him one-on-one, you each sat in the swinging chairs
swinging back and forth. [Chuckles] Huey loved those chairs.
But during the staff meetings, he'd take one of them down, or
sometimes he'd leave it up, and nobody wanted to sit in it, but
if there weren't any other chairs, if you were late, you ended up
in the other swinging chair.

And he had these other chairs which were real handmade
creaky things from Mexico that were leather and strips of
mesquite, I think. And they had worms in them. They were very
uncomfortable, and they would creak and they'd squeak.

Lage: So if people were restless--

Pesonen: If people were restless, there would be squeaking going on among
all of these chairs all over the place and when you'd come in on
Monday morning, there would be these little tiny heaps of sawdust
around these chairs where these worms had eaten at them over the
weekend. [Laughter] Every once in a while, one would collapse.

You just never knew what Huey's agenda was going to be. He
was kept on an even keel more or less by [Harold] Hal Warass, who
was one of his deputies and who had been a deputy for resource
secretaries for a long time for administration personnel dealing
with the Department of Finance. And Hal Warass was a consummate

204

bureaucrat. He was a wonderful guy. I mean, bureaucrat is not a
pejorative term in my lexicon. There are people who have to make
government work and understand how to do it and are very
successful at it. Hal Warass is one of those people. He stayed
on with the agency after Huey left; he'd been with Claire before
Huey; I think he had been with whoever was resources secretary
before her.

Lage: I haven't heard anybody mention his name. I've interviewed

[former Secretary of Resources Norman B.] Livermore [Jr.] and
Dedrick and--

Pesonen: Well, he was a Svengali of the Resources Agency. He was very

careful not to take a policy position. He made the engine run.

Lage: So did he keep Huey on track?

Pesonen: He tried. I had a lot of respect for Hal in the challenge he
faced.

Anyway, so you try to glean what Huey wanted from these
staff meetings. Sometimes he'd give you a direct order, but not
very often. You were supposed to pick up the vibrations of what
he wanted.

Lage: Or maybe he just wanted you to go your own way?

Pesonen: No, he didn't want you to go your own way. I think he was trying
to figure out what he wanted to do for a while that I was there.
He finally came up with a plan, and then we had to buy into that
plan, and it was a good plan. It was the idea behind his
Renewable Resources Institute [where Johnson is now director] , •
which focussed on Huey's central theme, which is still his
central theme, and I think it always has been since he left Trust
for Public Lands--maybe it was even before that—that a society
that is dependent on nonrenewable resources is doomed and that
now, while we've still got time and nonrenewable resources to
use, we should build a system that depends on renewable
resources: wood, water, sunlight, wind. And certainly wood was a
large part of that, for energy and building materials. So
forestry was very important to him as part of this renewable
resource notion; a society that recycled things, used things that
grew again, planted for the future. Wood energy was a big deal
with him.

Part of that program was the chaparral management program
which the Department of Forestry presented to him as a renewable
resource program that we could manage for millions of acres of
brushland in California, increasing water yield, wildlife yield.

205

Lage: But not increasing wood supply, am I right?

Pesonen: We wanted to try to make wood energy out of it: chopping it up

and bundling it up. There was a little pilot program down in San
Diego County to try that. It just wasn't economical. But using
logging slash and other more concentrated forms of wood did have
some possibilities, or appeared to. And I put that whole program
in charge of a deputy for resource programs, Loyd Forrest.

Lage: Forrest?
Pesonen: F-0-R-R-E-S-T.

[tape interruption]

Restructuring the Department's Staff and Management Systems

Pesonen: Where was I? Trying to figure out what Huey wanted.

1 had one agenda for myself, and then I, of course, was
going to carry out whatever program Huey had. First I had to put
together my staff. And it took me a while to find out what kind
of people I had inherited as deputies.

Lage: Are the deputies ones that you can appoint on your own?

Pesonen: Yes, they are called CEA positions, career executive

appointments. They don't have any civil service security in a
particular position. They have some civil service rights to
return to a civil service position of some kind, but they are
very high level. And they get paid well. I had three CEA
deputies. I have forgotten exactly how Moran had that organized,
but it didn't make any sense to me, anyway. He had one very
close deputy. In fact, he had the office rebuilt so that you
could close the doors of his office and this other deputy's
office, and there was a door between the two of them. I'm told
there was a very secretive little world in there.

He had a secretary whose name was Josephine Guillino who had
been there a long time, and I immediately developed a respect for
her. She was a very tough, strong woman, knew where all kinds of
skeletons were buried. She was very loyal, and she started
helping me out. She liked me. She figured I was honest, and she
said once she thought that was refreshing. [Laughter] I didn't
have any hidden personal agendas; I just wanted to do a good job.

206

So I ultimately restructured the top management, and that
always sends reverberations of anxiety throughout an
organization. And 1 let some of those people go. I brought in
Loyd Forrest, 1 brought in [Robert] Bob Connelly as the chief
deputy director.

Lage: Where did you get these people?

Pesonen: Bob Connelly had been in the legislature, working in the

legislature a long time. He'd been at the legislative analyst's
office, and he had worked on the staff of most of the important
people in the legislature, Senator [Alfred E.] Alquist. Let's
see, who else did he work for? He was an insider in the
legislature. He also was a very close personal friend. He and I
had gone to high school together, and he was probably my closest
personal friend as well. He still is. And he's very bright and
he's very knowledgeable. He's got good political sense. And he
was sort of bored with what he was doing over in the legislature,
so he came in as chief deputy. Then there was Loyd Forrest on
resource programs, [Robert] Bob Paulus who initially impressed
me, in charge of fire programs, and then there was an
administrative person.

Lage: But this was a reorganization?

Pesonen: This was a reorganization.

Lage: Moran hadn't divided it into fire and resources?

Pesonen: It wasn't quite that clear a division. Some of the fire
responsibilities were under the resource person.

And that caused a bit of a stir, that reorganization. But I
felt that it had to be done, and Hal Warass helped me carry out
so it went smoothly: got it through the Department of Finance and
got the positions authorized by the State Personnel Board.
There's a lot you have to do with what are called control
agencies in state government before you can do anything. It took
me a while to get over my impatience with that process. Once I
realized its purpose, then I figured out how to use it, and I
didn't resent it anymore.

Women and Minorities in the Department

Pesonen: There was another problem: the department was under some

sanctions or impending sanctions order from the personnel board

207

for failure to appoint minorities and women in the fire side of
the organization—well, in the whole organization, but the fire
side was 80 percent of it and that's where most of the problems
were. Coming out of a civil rights liberal law firm, there was a
lot of anxiety that I was going to start changing that, and we
were under pressure from the personnel board. They were going to
sanction the department and take over.

Lage: Didn't they eventually do that?

Pesonen: I think maybe they did, but I don't think they sanctioned them

while I was there. I kept fending off the sanctions because what
the sanction would mean was that they would take over personnel
administration for the department. Then you lose your freedom
and your flexibility in appointing people you think ought to be
in certain positions, and I wanted that authority. I didn't want
to lose it to the personnel board. So I had to promise to try to
get serious about it and put a lot of pressure on the department
about it. Well, I got a lot of heat for that.

The first big executive meeting I had was at Lake Arrowhead
and that was all the rangers, all the regional chiefs, all the
top staff in Sacramento. There were thirty-five or forty people.
I have a photograph of it, a big picture taken, and everyone's a
white male and they are all in uniform. It looks like the
military from the First World War or something. Here we all are
with our stars on our collars and khaki uniforms and they are all
pressed and shiny shoes, and there isn't a black face or a woman
or a Hispanic there. And that had to change. It had to change
all the way down the line.

Lage: Was that addressed at the meeting?

Pesonen: Yes. And you got the usual rationalizations, "They aren't

interested; they don't want the jobs; we've tried; we can't find
them; we've done everything we can; it's hopeless." And I didn't
accept that, and I think they knew I didn't accept that.

For example, I went down the hall to the supply room in
headquarters. There was a supply room on that floor—we were, I
think, on the ninth floor of the resources building- -and it was a
big room where everybody in the office had to go to get all kinds
of supplies, and it was run by two or three guys who didn't have
a lot to do. It was full of pinups and naked girls and the kind
of calendars you'd see in a little auto repair shop. And I said,
"Take that stuff down." And there was an uproar.

Lage: So it was really entrenched?

208

Pesonen: I said, "Every woman in this office has to come in here and pick
up materials for their department, and they've got to be exposed
to that stuff. I didn't think of the term "sexual harassment,"
but now people would call it sexual harassment. It was just
inappropriate. And they didn't like that at all. There was
grumbling and growling all around the building: "Can't have any
fun any more around here." [laughter]

Lage: What about hiring? Were you able to turn that around?

Pesonen: It was hard. It was hard because we met resistance all the way

down the line. And the director doesn't do the hiring; you don't
interview everybody for every fire fighter job. And you can't
set quotas. Legally you can't set quotas. You just have to put
the pressure on. There were systems for giving credit for
minority or woman status on exam results. You could add a
certain number of points, but the interview was, of course, a
large part of each one of these assignments, and that's where the
existing institutional mindset exerted its influence.

Lage: But could you give points to your supervisors for having success
at hiring minorities?

Pesonen: I think now, today, knowing what I know now, having worked in a
civil rights law firm, I would have done things somewhat
differently; I would have hired some more help. I didn't get as
much help from the personnel board on how to do this as I thought
I would. The personnel board sort of told you what to do, but
they didn't tell you how very well. That's my recollection,
anyway. I don't want to be unfair to them, but that's the way it
seemed to me. It seemed that I was kind of on my own. Now, I
know that there are people who are really skilled in how to carry
out affirmative action programs and who have developed a lot of
techniques for making it work, including techniques for rewarding
and evaluating and appointing authorities down the line. And I
just didn't understand that well enough and I didn't get much
help on it, as I recall.

There's been a lot of improvement since then. I don't think
that the department's under a sanctions order any longer, but
that's been thirteen years. I know my son, for the last three
years, has been a summer fire fighter, a seasonal fire fighter,
and there are women in every station now, and Afro-Americans. So
it is highly integrated now, at the lowest levels. It is still
not higher up. And the budget crises over the last number of
years have pretty much cut off much promotional opportunity, so I
think it's probably at the upper level still pretty much the kind
of organization that I saw.

209

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

I did create one high level position to which I appointed a
woman, Suzie Lange, who now works for the Department of
Education.

What was that?

That was press, publicity, special programs [assistant to the
director, policy analysis, information, and legislation]; kind of
a collection of things. But she was part of the executive level
group. Otherwise, I didn't do very well.

But you kept the personnel board off your back?
something about a 1980 sanction.

I thought I read

Well, there was a sanction proceeding, but I think they softened
it to give me a chance. I mean, I was new, and they knew I was
new, and they were going to give me a honeymoon period on this.
And we were successful in getting that.

Management by Objectives

Lage: You mention the bureaucracy, or the term "bureaucrat." Did you

get a sense of what the civil service appointees were like in the
department? Did you come to respect them or did you find them--

Pesonen: I respected a lot of them. I mean, it's a good department. It
has a very clear mission. I didn't think it was very well
managed in the sense that it was difficult in the budget section
to really get a handle on how many positions and how much
equipment we needed. It was all very subjective. That I found
really frustrating.

Lage: Is this mainly fire we are talking about?

Pesonen: Mainly fire. In terms of organization reform, the fire side of
the organization was so big, such a huge consumer of its budget,
that's where I spent a lot of my time. And I started looking
around for systems , management systems , that could be implemented
where I could get a handle on what the department did down to the
lowest level, where at every level they would have a plan for
what they did, where they would have a way of justifying their
budget. And I read a book called Management by Objectives and

210

Results in the Public Sector.1 I was intrigued by that book and
I went over and talked to the commissioner of the [California]
Highway Patrol, who had implemented such a system in the Highway
Patrol. I then brought in some consultants and had all the top
staff come, and we spent a couple of days going through a
training session on this management-by-objectives. Well, it
takes a long time to implement such a system, and it wasn't
completely implemented by the time I left. In fact, I'm told
that it was abandoned as soon as I left. [laughter]

Lage: Was it resisted by the people in charge?

Pesonen: Yes, they didn't like it because it took away their--look at it
from two sides: from my point of view, they could never tell me
why they needed a certain lookout, or why they needed a certain
number of engines, or why they needed a certain station, or why
they needed fifteen bulldozer operators in this ranger unit and
two bulldozer operators in that. There was just no way I could
get a handle on justifying the budget.

Lage: They just felt they needed it.

Pesonen: They felt they needed it, and of course they think in terms of
their worst-case catastrophes and very large fires. And that's
understandable because they are on the line. But I had to
respond to the legislature and the Department of Finance and the
Governor's Office and justify what I was asking for. We had to
make cuts, the cuts had to be where they would do the least
damage to the department's ability to do its mission. There was
just no objective way to classify need to do that.

Pesonen: So I started to concentrate on implementing this management-by-
objectives system. I was able to get authority to hire some
people: a guy named Bill who was skilled in computerizing this
kind of information. Suzie Lange [assistant to the director,
policy analysis, information, and legislation] was in charge of
the whole planning process. And it was glacial. I mean, I'd
push it, and I'd push it, and we would develop these plans at
descending levels in the organization and massage them and roll
up into the department plans . It was never sufficiently
finished, but it could be used for the budget process.

'George L. Morrisey (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley
Publications Company, 1976).

211

Lage: In a nutshell, could you describe what management by objectives
is?

Pesonen: Well, it's a way of—it's an intellectual process of setting

out--at increasing levels of detail and descending levels in a
line and staff organization—of articulating what your job is and
articulating it in terms of measurable units. At the top level,
you define a mission for the whole organization and that's a
narrative statement: what are you about, why do you exist, why
are you necessary? And then at the next level you break that
down into sub-missions and finally you get down to what are
called tasks or activities which can be very specific. You are
going to inspect 150 houses in the first three months of the year
for fire hazards in wildland areas. That's the lowest kind of
definition. And if you don't inspect 150 houses, you explain
why; why you only did 140 or maybe you would do 200, and you
would revise it each year.

At the top level you say the mission of the department is to
efficiently, economically, and swiftly reduce to the feasible
minimum the number of acres burned each year. The level of
detail and the level of precision in measurement increases as you
go further down in the organization. And you can structure all
of this and lay it out graphically and revise it. If it is in
place and it's used and people buy into it and understand it, I'm
told it works in some organizations. It has its faults.

Lage: Did it work in the Highway Patrol?

Pesonen: The Highway Patrol seemed pleased with it. That has a reputation
as a very well-run organization. There are surely other reasons
for it being a well-run organization than simply the use of this
management system.

Renewable Resource Programs

Pesonen: So a lot of my attention went into that. But then Huey came
along with, of course, his program. Huey didn't care what
management system I used. Huey had his own theories about
management, which were very one-on-one, and he didn't have the
patience to even listen to it. As long as it was my idea and he
had confidence in me, I had his support.

There were a couple of things that Huey got us involved in.
One was the wild and scenic rivers designation for quite a number

212

of rivers in California, which was a federal program. He wanted
everybody in his department to throw their resources into that.

Lage: Into designating the rivers as wild and scenic?

Pesonen: Yes. Designating the Smith River, the Klamath, the American,

parts of the Eel I think--! don't remember what all of the rivers
were—parts of the Stanislaus, the Kern, parts of the Feather.
But there were still administration regulations in the Department
of the Interior to designate these rivers, and that was a very
important program for him. Regardless of what department you
were in, you were expected to help the state lobby for that
legislation.

Then there was --in each department you were to come up with
a number of programs which would further this renewable resource
idea. My department came up with--I don't remember them all—but
chaparral management was one, wood energy was one; those were
sort of the high visibility ones.

Another major program that was under way and was a product
of legislation that had been passed before I got there, which was
really Vaux's baby, was the FRAP program, Forest Resources
Assessment Program, and the first report of that. That was all
done by the staff of the department. That was also under Loyd
Forrest's responsibility.

Lage: Now what did that involve?

Pesonen: That involved a very comprehensive assessment of all of the
resources in the state. All of the wildland resources.

Lage: That must have been a major undertaking.

Pesonen: That was a major project, and it was very well done, too. We had
some really good people on that.

Lage: Did this include private lands as well as public?

Pesonen: Everything. It was a whole economic analysis of timber,

brushland, water, wildlife resources, timberland, private and
public, large and small, and how it would meet the needs of the
future. The first report came out while I was director, and the
second report just came out two years ago. It's a very valuable
document. Nobody really knew what the forest resources were in
California so you didn't know how much you could cut. You didn't
know if you were overcutting or undercutting. You didn't know if
you were growing enough to replace what you were cutting; you

213

didn't know anything, including policies to increase sound
management such as tax and regulatory policies.

Lage: So you completed an evaluation of the entire thing?

Pesonen: The first evaluation. I didn't do it; the staff did it. There

was a very professional staff, but it was done while I was there.

Lage: Did it get reflected in policy?

Pesonen: Well, not a whole lot at that point. I think people were sort of
getting used to using it and understanding it. The second one
was prominently relied upon in the debates over the Grand Accord
last year and two propositions which were on the ballot in 1990.
Yes, it was the centerpiece of the debate in those campaigns. It
came up with some very startling results.

But that process was underway. It was long term. It needed
to be nurtured and supported; when there were budget tradeoffs, I
wanted to protect that program.

Lage: Where did Loyd Forrest come from?

Pesonen: Loyd had been in the department, and he'd also been in the

Department of Finance. He was a career government employee. He
had a forestry degree from [California State University at]
Humboldt. He also was a very good administrator, a very well-
organized administrator, and I had a lot of respect for him.
Most of Huey's programs ended up under Loyd's portion of my top
staff. And Loyd was a little secretive about it. I'd get
reports from him about how they were doing by and large, but I
didn't look over his shoulder a whole lot unless Huey wanted me
to.

Lage: And that worked?

Pesonen: I told Loyd what needed to be done, and he just got busy and did
it. And if he needed resources or help- -he was somewhat resented
in the organization, I think. He didn't come out of the fire
organization although he had some experience in it. But he was a
calculating, hard-driving manager.

The Fire Fighting Organization; Acquiring Air Force Helicopters

Lage: Did most people in the top levels come out of the fire
organization?

214

Pesonen: Yes.

Lage: Was there tension between the two parts?

Pesonen: There was some distance there, which was another thing I had to
deal with.

Our biggest coup was to get all of these helicopters from
the air force. It was one that Huey bought into reluctantly, and
Bob Connelly was the one who pulled that off. As a state agency,
the department was entitled to receive surplus military equipment
for nothing. We learned that the U.S. Air Force had twelve huge
"Huey" helicopters. They are the kind that can carry twelve
people. It's the air force version of the main troop carrying
helicopter that was used in Vietnam: a very fast, very
maneuverable, large, reliable helicopter. We wanted to use it
for the Chaparral Management Program with what's called a
helitorch, where you dribble jellied gasoline around a big patch
of brush and burn it off from the helicopter instead of having to
build roads and manage the fire by hand. The idea was that you
take a huge piece of territory that had a lot of brush on it and
you would burn a mosaic in it each year on a plan so that
ultimately, over a ten-year period it will all be burned.

Lage: To keep down the fire hazard?

Pesonen: To keep down the fire hazard, increase the water yield, increase
wildlife habitat.

Lage: Was this all scientifically accepted?

Pesonen: Pretty much, yes. There was a professor at Berkeley, Harold

Heady, who had been promoting it for decades. It was hard to do
because there were occasions when fires got away from you, you
know, if the wind conditions and fuel moisture were not right.
So you had to have a lot of study to pick exactly the right
conditions and a lot of training of the field people who
supervised it.

But you needed the helicopters, and we didn't have any
helicopters. We had some helicopters that were on contract only
during the fire season for dropping water, but we wanted our own
helicopters, so Bob went to Washington a couple of times and
pulled off this deal where the air force just gave us twelve of
these big helicopters, which are enormously expensive machines.

Anyway, of course, I had to budget for maintenance. We put,
I think, six of them into operation the first year.

215

Lage: And pilots. Did you have pilots?

Pesonen: We had to get pilots for them. They were not free, really.

Lage: Why did Huey have to be persuaded?

Pesonen: Because Huey didn't think much of helicopters. He didn't have

any interest in the fire side of the organization. That was just
a bunch of paramilitary /military types. It didn't interest him.
It had no resource magic about it. It was just a job the
department did. He wasn't unsupportive; he was just bored with
it.

I was kind of intrigued with it, actually. I kind of
enjoyed getting out in the field, and I loved the idea of having
all these helicopters. [laughter] But, of course, our hidden
agenda was to also use them for fire fighting because they could
carry crews quickly, and they could carry a much larger bucket
for a water drop. You know, they can fly over a lake and pick up
the water and go drop it on a fire right away. How effective
they are, I really don't know; nobody knows, I think. It's just
too hard to measure that, but there was a firm belief that they
were.

[tape interruption]

Pesonen: So we got the helicopters. We were afraid somebody would find
out that we got these twelve helicopters before we got them and
stop it. I thought Huey might try to stop it. I sort of kept
him informed, but I didn't go out of my way to demonstrate my
enthusiasm for them. And of course the air program staff was
delighted because this increased their domain enormously. They
got all these toys to play with. So we had to work out a plan
for these big flatbed trucks to go down to Davis-Monthan Air
Force Base in Arizona and pick them up, and instead of having a
caravan of twelve helicopters coming up the highway, some of them
came up Highway 99, some of them came up Highway 1, some of them
came up Highway 5--

Lage: This was to keep it a little--

Pesonen: --keep them all spread out so nobody noticed. [laughter]

Lage: Someone would think there is this attack on Sacramento.

Pesonen: We put them in a hangar down in Hayward until we could get them
assembled and checked out and a couple of them in the air. That
was a lot of fun, pulling that one off.

216

I probably, if I look back on it, was not as dedicated a
soldier in Huey's army of the future as he wanted.

Lage: Was this partly because the nature of your department was so
heavily related to fire fighting?

Pesonen: It was partly that, and it was partly that Huey just troubled me.
I never really quite knew what he wanted. And I'm not sure he
was quite clear. He may have had a big bubble of an idea in his
head, but he was not very good at articulating it. And some of
it was just impractical.

Lage: Any examples?

Pesonen: No, I don't want to do that. I liked him, and he amused me, but
sometimes I just thought he was frustrating and silly and
unrealistic.

Lage: Could you tell him?

Pesonen: No. Sometimes you'd give him gentle advice, and sometimes he'd
listen. Sometimes he'd get mad.

Lage: Maybe I've misunderstood what you've said, but I have the idea
that he wasn't a good manager, but he seemed to feel his
authority.

Pesonen: He had authority and ideas. He was not much of a manager. Huey
was impatient with institutions, and my sense of it was that if
any program was going to stick and stay after we left—because we
were political appointees and I knew our tenure was limited—that
anything we were going to do that was going to last had to be
institutionalized. You had to get the people in the organization
to buy into it. It had to be lawful; it had to make sense; it
had to have some payoff for the organization, and public support.
You couldn't just take a bright idea and throw it down and say,
"This is the way things are going to be," because it would
evaporate as soon as you weren't there to continue the pressure.

Lage: And you really didn't have a lot of time. I mean, you knew you
were going to be out by '82 and you went in in '79. So that's
just three years.

Pesonen: Closer to four years. But the first year is start-up and

figuring out where you are and getting the lay of the land in a
big organization, and that was a big organization. It was the
biggest organization within the Resources Agency by far. And it
was very spread out. It had 500 separate field facilities. I
never did get to see it all, I never got to see 10 percent of it.

217

Lage: The number of personnel must have fluctuated a great deal in the
summer, in the fire season?

Pesonen: Well, you had seasonal fire fighters and certain seasonal

positions, but the base staff didn't fluctuate very much. It
started to get cut back because Governor Jerry Brown was very
penurious about our department. That was one of the principal
topics of Huey's Monday morning staff meetings: fighting with the
Department of Finance for money for his resource renewal
programs.

Lage: He preferred those, so was he less generous with funding the fire
protection?

Pesonen: He wouldn't go out of his way to support that side of the
program.

Dismantling the State Fire Fighting Program in Orange County

Pesonen: And then along came the Orange County struggle, which was in the
wind when I got there. It was very clear that Jerry Brown wanted
to go out of office saying that he had limited the growth of
state government. He was going to be a no-growth governor. This
was his post-Proposition 131 public position, that he was going
to cut the size of government. Orange County was by far the
largest ranger unit in the department.

When the department was set up, Orange County was a rural
county, and as it exploded in growth—there was a program called
the "Schedule A" program. It was authorized by statute, and it
permitted the department to contract with local governments to be
the local government fire service, and it would be reimbursed by
the local government. There were parts of it that I think
probably never really were reimbursed at the administrative
level, but it was close to a bargain for a long time.

Lage: For the county?

Pesonen: For the county. The accounting was very complicated, but, on
balance, it was a good deal for a lot of counties for parts of
their fire service needs for small communities here and there.
It wouldn't cover a whole county in most cases; it would cover a
fire district or some small town or--

'Proposition 13 (June 1978).

David Pesonen, director, accepting the Smoky Bear Award for the California
Department of Forestry from Max Peterson, chief, United States Forest
Service.

218

Lage: In the wildland setting?

Pesonen: In counties which had a large wildland area. So it was very much
used down the coast, in Monterey, in San Bernardino, in San Luis
Obispo, and along the foothills, and in southern California.

Well, there had been a ranger down there who had been the
ranger in charge in Orange County throughout the entire period
that Orange County was going through its explosive growth,
starting in the fifties and on up into the seventies. When it
was no longer a bunch of orange groves, the Irvine Company had
come in, and there was Newport Beach and there was a lot of
things. It's a big population center. It swings elections in
the state now.

This ranger, his name was Carl (I can't remember his last
name now, sorry) was politically very astute and cultivated the
board of supervisors and was very effective in building this fire
organization until it had 500 employees. It was a big fire
department . You would fly into the John Wayne Airport down there
(or you did when I was director), and it's a major airport. The
fire department for the airport was the Department of Forestry.
All of these big trucks that run out and put foam on the runway
when an airplane is in trouble and are trained in crash rescue
and aircraft disasters, those were all Department of Forestry.

Lage: And was that true of all of the fire fighting within the county?

Pesonen: Except some cities had their own fire departments. But

throughout most of the county, which was largely unincorporated
and there were a lot of little communities which had just bought
into this Schedule A system; it was just huge. There were a lot
of employees, and if you could turn those over to the county so
they were no longer on a state payroll, it would look like you
had cut the state payroll by 500 positions. The public payroll
wouldn't be cut at all if you counted the counties because the
county would have to take those people on.

Well, the Department of Forestry employees were unionized by
this time, and there was a lot of opposition. There was a fear
that Orange County was just the beginning of dismantling the
Schedule A program which probably accounted for half the Jobs in
the department, or at least a third of the jobs. It was a big
part of the organization. If you cut out all of the Schedule A
contracts, the opportunity for promotion within the department
would be much less for most people. So Orange County was a way
station for rising in the organization; there were a lot of jobs
there. But it was very clear that Jerry Brown wanted that
contract cut loose.

219

Lage: Wasn't there some pressure from the local fire fighting union?

Pesonen: Yes, well there was a dispute. That complicated it. That was
one of the reasons for Jerry Brown's position. The Federated
Fire Fighters wanted to unionize as many people as possible, like
all unions, and they couldn't get their hands on Orange County.
Here was a big plum. If there was a county fire department, it
could be unionized by Federated Fire Fighters and taken out of
local CDFEA, California Department of Forestry Employees
Association, which was the union I had to deal with. It was a
union of state employees like CSEA [California State Education
Association] .

There was a lot of heat about this. There was a lot of
antagonism between the two union organizations. It was really a
reflection of turf battles between the leadership. To the rank-
and-file, I don't think it made a lot of difference, but union
bosses had been there forever, and this was how they got paid:
with the dues from these people. I was pretty cynical about
that. But it was very clear that because of union pressures from
the Federated Fire Fighters and because of this agenda to cut the
state service, Orange County was going to go.

And there was a widespread belief in the department that the
reason I was appointed as the director was to carry out this
anti-CDFEA, anti-state employee agenda. Well, I didn't even know
about the issue when I got appointed. People started talking
about Orange County, and I didn't really understand what was
going on. So I finally decided I had better figure it out in a
hurry. If there is that much talk about it, I'd better
understand it.

Lage: Did you get it from Huey?

Pesonen: I got it from within the department, and I got it from the union
representative for the Federated Fire Fighters who came to see
me, possibly at the governor's suggestion. It became very clear
that I had to see that it happened. And I had to see to it that
it happened pretty soon.

Lage: Did you get direction from above? Do you remember?

Pesonen: [Pause] Yes. But it was as though they expected me to

understand that Orange County was going to be turned over to
Orange County and taken out of the department. I don't remember
ever receiving a memo that so much as said so, but it was not
necessary. I was visited by a lot of people, some that opposed
it and some who favored it, but it was very clear that this was
going to happen. Some things had gone on about it before I got

220

appointed director. Maybe the governor had made some public
pronouncements. There just wasn't any question it was going to
happen.

Well, it wasn't as simple as just saying, "OK, the contract
is over." There was all of this equipment, hundreds of pieces of
equipment in fire stations where nobody had paid any attention to
the title, or half the building would be owned by the state and
half would be owned by the county, or the county would own the
grounds and the state would own the building, or the county had
bought the fire engine and then it had partly depreciated but it
wasn't totally depreciated. There were benefits that many of the
employees had accumulated over the years, vacation, sick leave,
retirement, and those all had to be transferred without their
losing anything.

So it took three or four pieces of legislation to amend the
Public Employees Retirement Act — there were four or five bills,
three or four bills anyway, that had to be shepherded through the
legislature, and every time there was a hearing on them, the
Department of Forestry employees would show up en masse and
oppose them. [Laughter] And here was their director taking one
position and the rank-and-file taking another, and I didn't have
any choice; I had my marching orders.

Lage: But you were the one who had to--

Pesonen: I was the one that had to take the heat from within the

department, so it caused a lot of moral problems and a lot of
tension between me and the field organization. They thought I
was the governor's cat's paw, and I was. I had to be. I was
carrying out the governor's dirty work as far as they were
concerned. I just didn't have any choice. And it made sense to
me, too. I saw the department as a wildlands fire department,
and in Orange County it clearly was no longer a wildlands fire
department; they had high-rise ladders, they protected the
airport. They were a municipal fire department.

Lage: It does make sense, looking back on it.

Pesonen: Looking back on it, but from the point of view of these employees
who were looking for job security, it was not good.

So eventually it happened, and after it happened, there was
a vote of no-confidence by the employees against me as the
director. And I attributed a lot of it to the Orange County
situation. And probably a lot of it to the fact that they
realized that deep in my heart I was not a fireman. I was

221

interested in the resource side of the organization. I didn't
come across as a good old fireman. Never will.

Lage: Even though you got them the helicopters?

Pesonen: Yes, but that was just for part of the staff. The ground forces
never cared that much about the helicopters anyway. In fact,
there was tension between the air and ground forces. This goes
on in any emergency response organization.

Lage: Now, Vaux mentioned, in talking about that Orange County

situation, that some people were worried about diminishing the
fire response abilities because you had these 500 people that
could be transferred, when needed, throughout the state.

Pesonen: That was one of the arguments that was made within the

organization: that since the Orange County organization, even
though it was paid for by the county, the contract provided that
it remained under the Department of Forestry's command structure,
and all of those resources were available to be called on without
going through an intermediate command structure, a separate
command structure, to be called in and managed on large
catastrophes.

There may have been some diminishment of that, but there are
mutual aid agreements all of the time among the various fire
departments. If it doesn't work, you have things like what
happened with this Oakland Hills fire, where the Berkeley fire
station right behind my house here didn't know for two hours that
it was supposed to go to the fire which you could see out the
window here. There was a bad command structure: bad mutual aid
and bad joint response system.

**

Pesonen: But the department had developed a very fine integrated command
structure called Instant Command System, which is in place now
and was in place pretty much then. So I don't think there has
been very much diminishment, at least nobody says anything more
about it. The transition went smoothly, and the employees that
ended up in Orange County get paid more than they were paid by
the department and were unionized immediately by the Federated
Fire Fighters. And then the Department of Forestry employees
ultimately joined the Federated Fire Fighters after I left, so
there is no tension between the two unions anymore because they
are all one union.

222

Sources of Tension Between the Director and Department Employees

Lage: Well, what did this vote of no confidence mean to you or mean to
the department?

Pesonen: Well, I wasn't happy about it.

Lage: Was that voted by the union organization?

Pesonen: It was by the union organization, pretty much.

Lage: Were there other labor negotiations problems?

Pesonen: No. Well, we fought them on the budget every year, Bob Connelly
and I, but that's management's responsibility. You are not going
to give away the store. We had a budget constraint. The more
money they got for salaries, the less we had for all of the other
things we had to do. We were just in a management frame of mind;
that was my job.

I think part of it was the Orange County thing; part of it
was their sense that I was what they perceived as a bit of an
elitist. I was the first director who hadn't come up through the
ranks . Moran had come up through the ranks ; everybody who had
ever been director had come up through the organization, and I
was this outsider thrust upon them, and I brought in a chief
deputy who was an outsider. It's a very insular organization.
And I wouldn't be surprised if my touch was not gentle all of the
time either.

Lage: Do you think the affirmative action measures were a source of
tension?

Pesonen: Affirmative action had something to do with it. There were a lot
of changes that were under way that were--

Lage: The management-by-objectives?

Pesonen: I don't know how much that had to do with it because I don't

think that ever got down to the rank- and- file. It was a bit more
in terms of talk. The system never got developed enough to get
down to the station level.

Lage: What about fire prevention programs? Was that a concern?

Pesonen: It was a concern, but I don't think it was a big policy issue.
It was just something we did.

223

Lage: I suppose the chaparral management must have been--

Pesonen: The chaparral management was justified partly in terms of not so
much fire prevention as fuel reduction.

Relations with Timber Companies and the Legislature

Lage: How about approving timber harvest plans? Was that
controversial?

Pesonen: That was an ongoing issue.
Lage: Were most of them just routine?

Pesonen: Most of them were pretty routine. Occasionally some would come
along where they were very controversial, mostly where they were
close to communities and affected water supplies. The degree to
which timber harvest plans are controversial is a reflection of
the local population. When I was director, the north coast was
just beginning to be invaded—that ' s the wrong word, but some
people would use it—by counter-culture people and retirees and
other people who had come from urban areas looking for solace in
the wilderness, or what they think of as a wilderness in
Mendocino and Humboldt counties, southern Humboldt, anyway, who
weren't tied at all to the timber industry and who weren't afraid
of being political activists. So more and more there was
opposition to timber harvest plans around the coast, in southern
Humboldt and certainly in Mendocino.

Lage: Now, were those plans that were developed by the companies and
then approved by the department or denied?

Pesonen: The timber harvest plans are always developed by the company
forester who certifies that it meets the rules. Then it is
inspected, submitted to the department and the department has a
very short period of time to evaluate it, get comments from [the
Department of] Fish and Game or the Regional Water Quality
Control Board if necessary. And some of them were controversial.
And I sometimes denied them, and the companies would appeal them
to the board.

One of the ones that stands out was in Mendocino County. It
was in the headwaters of the water supply for a little community
on the coast, and I think I turned that one down and it got
appealed. I don't know what happened to it.

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

224

There was one that I found a press release for having to do with
the bald eagle near Round Valley. You denied the timber harvest
plan.

Yes, but I think that kind of got worked out on that one.
revised and then finally got approved.

OK.

It got

You know, it is funny that even though that was my main interest,
there isn't anything there much that stands out in my memory from
my term as director around timber harvest plans as much as around
the fire organization.

Because that side of the organization dominated?
Yes.

That's too bad that that was your interest but you weren't able
to pursue it that much.

Well, I always harbored the hopes that I would get it under
control and then I could go really pay more attention to the
resource section. It never happened.

Did you get an impression of the private companies and how
responsible they were and--

Well, yes. Every company has a personality, you know? Some are
easier to get along with than others. Some have a very
antagonistic view toward any regulations. There were some
changes that went on while I was there. Hank Trobitz retired •
from Simpson [Lumber Company] , and they brought in a new manager
who was very much a supply-side economist and very much a
believer in no regulations and he fought us hard.

I did a lot of just sort of learning, too.
lot of tours and inspection tours.

I went out on a

Earlier there had been--I can't quite remember the details of it
--but there had been the controversy about making the timber
harvest plans substitute for the CEQA [California Environmental
Quality Act]1 requirements?

Pesonen: That was pretty well resolved before I got there.

'A.B. 2045, California Environmental Quality Act of 1970, 1970 Reg.
Sess., Cal. Stat., ch. 1433 (1970).

225

Lage: Was that taken care of?

Pesonen: Yes, it had been determined, legislatively, by the time I was
appointed that timber harvest plans were the functional
equivalents of CEQA's environmental impact statements.

Lage: Did you work closely at all with different legislators?

Pesonen: Well, I worked with those whose committees affected my budget and
had jurisdiction over my budget or over policy legislation
affecting the department.

Lage: Did you have to go to testify frequently?

Pesonen: I testified, and I would testify on the budget all of the time
with staff assistance.

Lage: Any legislators that were particularly helpful or understanding?

Pesonen: Well, Senator [Alfred] Alquist was helpful, and a lot of that was
because of Bob Connelly's skill and familiarity with him.
[Assemblyman Meldon E.] Mel Levine, who is now a congressman
running for U.S. Senate now, was helpful. [Assemblyman] Byron
Sher was very helpful. He took a great interest in forestry
matters. [Assemblyman Thomas M.] Tom Hannigan from Sonoma
County. [Assemblyman Douglas H.] Doug Bosco, who then went on to
Congress and then got defeated. I noticed he was one of those
who bounced a lot of checks [in the current scandal involving the
House of Representatives bank] . [Senator] Barry Keene in the
senate and Alquist in the senate. Certainly Senator Robert
Presley from Riverside County was very helpful.

Lage: In what respect?

Pesonen: Well, if there was bad legislation, he [Presley] was a good

person to talk to to stop it. He was very well respected in the
senate. He was a real statesman.

I'm sorry, Ann. You know, I just don't have a distinct
recollection of any large pieces of legislation that came out.
There was always something happening.

Lage: I can imagine.

Pesonen: I mean, I was over in the legislature once a week it seemed like.
It was very frustrating because I--

Lage:

Was it putting out fires?

226

Pesonen: Putting out fires. Just responding to inquiries or attending
interim hearings or—there's an awful lot that goes on that
doesn't have any product anticipated at the end of it. It is
just somebody wants to do something, or they want to know
something, or they want to talk with somebody.

Lage: And you were the one? You couldn't send Bob Connelly?

Pesonen: Sometimes they wanted the director. If they were on your budget
committee or your policy committee, the director had better
respond.

Lage: But some of that, you felt, wasn't that useful?

Pesonen: Well, it wasn't whether it was useful or not, that's politics.

Politics is people rubbing up against issues and each other. It
was exploratory, or it was an excuse for them to get their per
diem by holding a hearing.

Lage: Did you really feel that frequently?
Pesonen: Yes, sometimes.

Lage: That's kind of discouraging if you feel you have a job to do
and--

Pesonen: Well, yes. I mean, the budget is not something that just happens
when you go to a hearing. There is a lot of internal work
developing it, and there was a lot of time spent on that process,
internally.

Lage: Especially with the size of your department.

Pesonen: With the size of the department, there was just a lot of time
spent on that. You are in the budget process year round. You
get one budget passed, and you are already building the budget
for the next round. The budget passes in the summer; the
Department of Finance wants your budget by the end of November
for the next year so it can be submitted to the legislature in
January so they can flyspeck it before they put it in the final
budget, which the legislative analyst is constantly critiquing.

Money is the mother's milk of a lot of things, but it
certainly is what runs government and you spend, as a top
administrator, an enormous amount of your time on it. At least I
did. Maybe I shouldn't have spent so much time on it. Maybe I
should have left a lot of that to staff people. But I took an
interest in it.

227

Lage: Did this type of job fit your--did you find that you liked it?

Pesonen: Yes, I liked it. I like winning things. I liked making things
happen. I found parts of it frustrating. It was very slow to
make things happen and to institutionalize them. And I had a
learning curve of how to administer a big organization.

Lage: It was quite different from what you had done.

Pesonen: Big difference. You know, you have to develop a style you are
comfortable with that works. It was not an organization of the
kind of people that I find myself congenial with. It was not an
intellectual organization; it is a get-out-and-do, good-old-boy
network, kind of organization. And there was a side of me that
liked that.

Lage: You like to go fishing.

Pesonen: Yes, but that's a solitary pursuit.

It intrigued and interested me. But I always felt the
outsider. I never felt I was folded into the organization at
some emotional level that some people reached. And I never
particularly pursued that.

Lage: You probably didn't work there long enough for that to happen.
Pesonen: I don't think it ever would have happened.

Lage: If you had the eight years of the Brown administration to be in
charge, do you think- -

Pesonen: I might have gotten more comfortable, but I was never one of the

boys, and I never really tried to be one of the boys. I may have

worn a uniform and some of the other trappings, but down deep
that wasn't the kind of person I was.

Lage: The director wore a uniform also?

Pesonen: Oh yes. Not every day, but when I went to some of our functions
and ceremonial things, I had a uniform. I had a uniform
allowance .

Lage: You mentioned- -maybe it was in your resume- -that one of the

things you did was getting industry acceptance of the Z'Berg-
Nejedly Act.

Pesonen: Yes, I worked hard to--I should have said that earlier. One of

my agendas was to reduce the level of adversarial feeling towards

228

the Z'Berg-Nejedly Act, and I think I had some success at that.
It was never complete.

Lage: Where did the adversarial relationships come in?

Pesonen: If a timber harvest plan which had some opposition to it still

met the law, I approved it. I was very careful to know that the
industry knew that I was going to follow the law and I didn't
have an environmentalist agenda. I was happy to see the law
changed, and I would work to change the law, but if I couldn't
change it, I was going to follow it. I also spent a lot of time,
like anybody would, like a lobbyist, in effect. There was an
open-door policy. The timber industry representatives could go
in and make their pitch anytime they wanted, and I didn't treat
them like enemies.

Lage: Was that a difficult transition for you? I mean you kind of came
from being seen as an activist, whether you saw yourself that way
or not, to becoming an administrator.

Pesonen: That was not hard for me at all. I think that is the kind of

person I am. I mean, there were times in my career in the past
when there was no choice but to be a hard-charging activist to
get the job done. But that was to get the job done, that's not
because I'm inherently one who likes to fight.

Lage: Well, Claire Dedrick, coming out of the environmentalist

community had a really hard time, partly because she was so
criticized by environmentalists when she tried to—

Pesonen: She was very insecure, I think. And she had a hard time. She

really had a hard time. She was a woman—the first woman to head
a resource agency which was a very white-male-dominated set of
institutions. Fish and Game is terrible that way; Forestry is
terrible that way. Jan Denton tells stories of when she went in
as director of conservation over at the Division of Mines and
Geology and a couple of other divisions there that were mostly
institutionalized male organizations. They were having a
terrible time. [Secretary of Agriculture and Services Agency]
Rose Bird had a terrible time at—where was it—Agriculture. I
didn't have that problem.

Lage: You didn't feel that you were expected to behave in a certain way
by the environmental community?

Pesonen: Well, my reputation was pretty solid, number one. Number two, in
those days the Department of Forestry was not the focus of a lot
of the environmental controversies.

229

The Z'Berg-Nejedly Act wasn't very old. We were still
maturing. And I was determined to see that that process
continued. Where there was going to be some serious resource
damage and the timber harvest plan had a flaw in it, I'd turn it
down.

Lage: Did you feel like you made progress getting the timber industries
to buy into it a little more?

Pesonen: I don't know. I really don't know. [Laughter] I know they'd
rather not have the Z'Berg-Nejedly Forest Practices Act, and
that's never going to change. They are in it for business, and
it constrains their business. They are never going to get used
to that.

Inspecting Fire Services at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

Lage: One thing to mention—this is skipping around a little bit—but I
think you said earlier, "Bring up Diablo Canyon when we talk
about the Department of Forestry."

Pesonen: That is a wonderful story. The Diablo Canyon plant, which was
the most controversial nuclear power plant in the country by
then—there had been terrible mistakes by PG&E [Pacific Gas and
Electric Company]: they had reversed plans; there was the
suggestion that they had known of the Hosgre fault and covered it
up; and there were demonstrations going on all of the time.
Mothers for Peace down there had organized that community.

Jerry Brown, consistent with his early position on nuclear
power, had his administration, through counsel hired in
Washington, D.C., intervene in the licensing proceedings. Now,
at that stage, the issue in the licensing proceedings was the
adequacy of the emergency response plans . Part of an emergency
response plan, of course, is a fire plan.

I was not involved in that process at all. It wasn't part
of my job and I just didn't get involved in it, but one day I got
a call from the governor's office. They were furious because
PG&E had filed a pleading in the proceedings in Washington to
show that their emergency response plan was adequate and part of
their emergency response plan was the Department of Forestry as
the fire department. I knew absolutely nothing. I had not known
anything about this .

230

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

So I started calling. I called first--! went through the
chain of conmand--and I called John Hastings, who was the
regional chief in Monterey, and he didn't know anything about it.
The ranger in charge of San Luis Obispo County was a guy named
Tom Wadell, and I had never liked Wadell. He was a very
reactionary, right-wing type, and he was always kind of sour in
our meetings. I don't think he was very well liked in the
organization at all. And he was very friendly with the manager
of the PG&E plant — of the project manager for the Diablo Canyon
plant—and he had entered into an agreement with them that the
Department of Forestry would respond to fire emergencies in
Diablo. It was just a letter agreement.

Without clearing it?

He never cleared it. He never went up through the chain of
command. He figured San Luis Obispo County was his bailiwick; he
was the ranger in charge there, and he could do this if he felt
like it. And a lot of those agreements were made with local
communities or little institutions or hospitals or things like
that. He just saw this as another one of these little side
deals. There was no budget for it; there was no money involved.

You'd expect maybe even a little special training on how to deal
with a fire at a nuclear power plant.

Pesonen: One would expect so.

So I said, "Well, we are going to go down there and do an
inspection." So I put my uniform on, and I made arrangements to
pick up John Hastings at the Monterey airport, and one or two
other staff people on the fire side of the organization. We flew
down to San Luis Obispo in the department's twin-engine
Beechcraft Baron and we all landed at the San Luis Obispo
airport, and there was Wadell and his entourage to take the
director and the regional chief around. I insisted that I wanted
to go inside the plant and meet the plant manager and discuss
this contract and discuss what the emergency response plans were.

Well, the word was out, and I had heard back already. This
was my antinuclear agenda. Well, it had nothing to do with my
antinuclear agenda. It had to do with the fact that the governor
was on my back for having had my department undercut his lawsuit
in Washington.

So the first place we went was the little fire station at
the airport. The Department of Forestry had a contract to
protect the airport, and only one fire captain was there. We
went in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee and ate some cookies,

231

and I asked him if he knew about this. Well, he had heard
something about it, but he didn't know what he was supposed to
do. I said, "What happens if you get a call that there's a fire
in the nuclear power plant over there? What are you going to
do?" He said, "Well, I don't know. I guess I'll go over there."

Lage: And see what's happening?

Pesonen: See what's happening. A large part of the fire response
organization in San Luis Obispo County was a volunteer
organization: a local druggist, a gas station operator. You blow
a whistle, and everybody would throw on their turn-out gear and
jump on the truck, or they would go to the site in their personal
car.

So we went to one or two other stations, and there was
clearly a lot of just bewilderment at the field staff level.
They had had no training. They had been in the plant once or
twice, or they had been around the grounds, but no significant
training, no implementation of this agreement.

Then we went out to the plant, and you had to go through a
very elaborate security system to get into that plant. You had
to park a couple of miles away and go through a metal detector.
I had five silver stars on each collar of my uniform that sent
the metal detectors crazy. Then we got into vans and drove out
to the coast, and that is one awesome facility. When you come
around a corner and see it, you get the same feeling you got when
you first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey twenty-five years ago. You
expect Strauss 's Thus Spake Zarathustra to come blasting out of
the heavens. It was the mind-boggling, awesome, inhuman size of
the facility. Then we had to go through another security system
to get inside the plant grounds, and everybody was very nervous.
The plant manager, it turned out, had been a witness for PG&E in
the Widener case, and I had cross-examined him when I was a
private lawyer.

Lage: Did you remember him?

Pesonen: Oh yes, and he remembered me, too. So here we were in entirely
different roles.

The plant had been tremendously controversial. The company
was under a lot of bad press for it. Everybody was paranoid as
hell about anybody looking over their shoulder. And they had
made some terrible mistakes which had been very embarrassing.
But they had to go through with this, and I was now in this
official position.

232

So we went through the plant, and they" had an emergency plan
for the plant. I had been given a copy of it before, which I had
read before I went down there and had along with me. The first
thing I remember is going inside that place and thinking, "How is
anybody ever going to find their way around in here?" There were
pipes and huge five- foot-thick steel doors that would slam shut
in emergencies, and the place was as big as several football
fields, it seemed like, inside. I wanted to go up to the control
room, which I had seen lots of pictures of--I had seen lots of
pictures of nuclear power plant control rooms with these acres of
dials and buttons and switches and people sitting around at
counters and command centers and lights and buzzers and —

Lage: Another movie scene.

Pesonen: Another movie set, and I wanted to go up there. Well, we got in
the elevator, and the elevator had about six buttons on it, and
each one had an odd number. It was like twenty- five, forty- six,
one hundred and thirty-three, two hundred and ten, and I said,
"What are those numbers that are on those buttons?" He said,
"That's the elevation above sea level of the place where the
elevator stops." I said, "Well, how is any fireman going to know
that? It doesn't say "control room', it doesn't say anything.
Even if you are going to use the elevator. Say you have an
emergency at 213, how is he going to know what that is?" "Well,
I don't know." Nobody had a very good answer for that.

So there were lots and lots of things that a person who was
responding to a fire there would have to know, would have to be
trained in, for which there had been no training at all and no
thought put into. And I kept asking these questions as we went
around, and the plant manager was getting more and more
embarrassed, it was very clear.

So we spent a couple of hours in there, and I was
fascinated. I had never been in a nuclear power plant, and while
I was there I wanted to see as much as I could, just out of long-
suppressed curiosity. I said, "Well, let's assemble in this
little conference room," which was out by the gate, as we were
leaving, and I started peppering this plant manager and his staff
with questions. I remember I said—they didn't even know it was
a volunteer fire department--! said, "I noticed the security we
went through to get here. You had to know the license number of
every vehicle that is going to arrive, you had to put us through
an elaborate check process, we had to get badges, you had a
character with an automatic weapon watching us while we went
through the gate."

Lage: This is all worrying about terrorism, do you think?

233

Pesonen: Oh, yes, they were very worried about terrorism or sabotage.
That was the purpose of it, and it was heightened by the
demonstrations and people who climbed the fence and sneaked into
the grounds.

Lage: I see. So they were worried about the antinuclear activists
rather than--

Pesonen: Yes, but the purpose of all of this security was to protect

against sabotage, but their sensitivity to it was heightened by
these assaults from these demonstrators who were climbing the
fences all of the time.

Pesonen: "Let's say you have a fire here, and your own in-house brigade
can't handle it, and you call on the Department of Forestry to
respond and assist you. What do you think is going to happen?"

He said, "Your fire engines with their crews will show up."
I said, "No, that's not what's going to happen. What's going to
happen is four or five pickup trucks and small cars with little
"volunteer fire department' stickers on the bumpers are going to
show up, and these guys are going to be in street clothes, and
they are going to jump out and open the trunk of their car and
start putting on their gear. And you're not going to know who
they are. In the meantime your emergency is growing inside the
plant. And what are your security people going to do? Are they
going to let all of these people through without knowing who they
are or where they come from? They are going to come out of the
local gas station and the local drugstore and a shoe store. Who
knows where they are going to come from. And there may be a
terrorist among them. Are you going to let them all in here and
open all of the doors?"

Well, they hadn't thought about that. They didn't know it
was a volunteer fire department. They didn't know that the CDF
[California Department of Forestry] professional staff, like the
captain I had met at the station by the airport, had no training
and no plans. They just didn't have a plan.

Lage: Was that usual, to use these volunteer- -

Pesonen: Oh, that was very common. We had a lot of volunteer ism and they
are integrated into the command and communications system of the
department .

Well, it was very clear that that plan was dead at the end
of that meeting. So I went back to Sacramento, and I just wrote

234

Wadell and I said, "Cancel that letter." He immediately went to
the press, the San Luis Obispo newspaper, saying that this was
Jerry Brown illegitimately using his administration to undercut
PG&E's position in the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission]
proceedings, that it was a left-wing plot. There were headlines
and editorials--

Lage: He didn't follow the chain of command too well.

Pesonen: He never had.

Lage: But PG&E seem to have seen the wisdom of your view.

Pesonen: He was the only person I fired.

Lage: Oh, you did?

Pesonen: I fired him for incompetence. Of course, he grieved it.

Lage: Now, when did you fire him in relation to this incident?

Pesonen: Fairly near the end of my term. It was about six or eight months
after that. I brought a disciplinary proceeding against him, and
we settled it by his agreeing to retire. Although Wadell was
part of management, he hired a lawyer who represented the union,
[Ronald] Ron Yank, who is a labor lawyer in San Francisco.

Lage: He lives right near here, doesn't he?

Pesonen: Yes, he lives right in my neighborhood, and he's a friend of
mine.

Lage: Was there another incident that caused you to institute
disciplinary proceedings?

Pesonen: I told him to implement another plan, to put a real plan into

action. I said, "I don't mind the department being in support of
PG&E if they have an emergency out there, but you've got to have
a plan that will work," and he dragged his heels on that, and he
was insubordinate. So I decided to — that was the only head that
rolled in my whole time I was there. I'm sure he believes to
this day that I was carrying out my antinuclear agenda, which
simply wasn't the case.

Lage: It sounds as if PG&E could realize that it wouldn't work, that
the plan was--

Pesonen: Well, I think without the lawyers in Washington when they filed
this plan, they never would have known about it. I never would

235

have known about it if it hadn't shown up in legal circles in
Washington.

Lage: That's a good story. Was there any other fallout on that?

Pesonen: I don't think so. I don't remember any fallout. I think that
was very close to the time 1 wasn't there any longer.

Lage: OK. Any other thoughts about that time, or do you want to mull
it over before our next interview?

Pesonen: Well, let me mull it over. Julie suggested we talk about it

because she remembers some of those things better than I do. We
just haven't had a chance to do that.

Lage: OK, we'll do that, and if you come up with some other incidents
or--

Pesonen: But that's the grand sweep of it, anyway.

Lage: Yes, I think we've covered the overall general topics unless

something else comes up like that Diablo that you can remember.

236

VIII SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE, CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, 1983-1984
[Interview 7: May U, 1992] it

Midnight Appointment by Jerry Brown, to the Wrong Court

Lage: Here we are, May 14, 1992, continuing our interview with David
Pesonen. We decided that we had pretty well completed our
discussion of the Department of Forestry, and we want to go on to
the next stage, which was your midnight appointment to the court.
All of those judicial appointments that Jerry Brown made at the
very last minute got a lot of play in the newspapers. How did
that come about for you?

Pesonen: Well, I made application to be a judge. There is a process, and
it's a lengthy one. It hadn't occurred to me to seek judicial
appointment, but I was having lunch with Coleman Blease one day,
who was on the State Court of Appeal in Sacramento and an old
friend. And I had met Cole in the Bodega campaign. He was with
the American Civil Liberties Union at that time—he was the
lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union at one point- -and
he had been appointed to the court of appeal by Jerry Brown early
in Jerry's term. He was a very fine lawyer. He had a practice—
a private practice— in Sacramento. His other partner is a
federal district judge in Sacramento.

In fact, during the Prop. 15 campaign I think I described
earlier in this interview that we brought a petition against the
secretary of state and the Attorney General's Office and the
legislative counsel to reform the ballot summary statement of
Proposition 15 as it would appear on the ballot and the petition.
I used Coleman' s office as a base when we tried that case in
Sacramento. So we went way back.

So he had suggested it, and the idea kind of cooked for a
while, and then I decided I would apply. I applied for the court

237

of appeal and was approved by the Commission on Judicial Nominees
Evaluation, I think it's called, and that's a commission that
investigates all applications for judicial appointments. And I
received a high rating from them; they do a background check.
But then it sat. That was in the late summer /early fall of 1982.

The problem with that appointment was that it was to have
been a newly-created position on the court of appeal; there was
legislation newly through the legislature to authorize more
positions because the case load had increased and so forth. And
it became very partisan over whether those positions would be
approved or not--

Lage: Before the change in governorship?

Pesonen: --before the change in governorship. And I don't remember all of
the details of that because it got very intricate and there were
some trade-offs. I think Republicans wanted some of the
appointments in exchange for their votes, and I wasn't privy to
those negotiations. Then, once the legislation was approved,
there was a lawsuit brought by a prominent Republican attorney in
San Francisco, alleging that the legislation had been improperly
adopted, and the strategy was simply to hold it up until Jerry
Brown went out of office and had no power to fill the positions.
So in exchange for some tradeoffs that I don't know the
background on, Jerry made a couple of appointments to the court
of appeal to the positions that I might have gotten appointed to.

It was very hectic then.
Lage: He made appointments that were agreeable to others, you mean?

Pesonen: They were agreeable to others, or they were politically more
palatable to Jerry for some reason.

Lage: Did you discuss this with Brown or others?

Pesonen: He was not very accessible on this issue. His appointments

secretary, Byron Georgiou [legal affairs secretary], was the one
I talked to mostly. And then there was a kind of a rumor mill
about it around the capitol. Tony Kline was one of the people I
talked to, J. Anthony Kline, and he's on the court of appeal now.
And [William A.] Bill Newsom [Jr.], who was close to the governor
and is also a court of appeal justice.

Lage: Were they all appointed then?

Pesonen: They were all appointed by Jerry earlier, but they were in touch
with the process and they were acquaintances of mine.

238

Well, it became clear that the court of appeal was not a
possibility, and I think Byron Georgiou suggested—or maybe
Coleman Blease suggested—that I resubmit the application for the
superior court in San Francisco because one of the appointments
to the court of appeal, one or two, would have been from the San
Francisco superior court, so there would be openings behind those
positions.

One of those appointments that was made before the midnight
appointments was [Donald] Don Ring, whom I also knew, having
tried a case before him when I was in practice, and we'd known
each other by reputation and a little bit socially. I got a call
one day, probably in November of "82 from Don King who said that
he understood I was going to be appointed to the superior court
in San Francisco--it might have been early December, but it was
near the end of Jerry's term—and that I was going to be
appointed to Don King's position and that he would like me to
come down to San Francisco and meet his court reporter and his
clerk because those are positions that are at the discretion of
the judge, and he wanted to take care of his staff and see that
they had jobs after he went to the court of appeal. For some
civil service reason, they couldn't go to the court of appeal
with him. Also, appellate court justices don't have court clerks
to keep their minutes and manage the courtroom.

So I went down and I had a very nice visit with them, and I
thought they looked like competent people, and I would get along
fine. I gave them as much assurance as I could that if I got the
appointment they would be my staff. I also visited the presiding
judge, who was Ira Brown at that time—he's now retired—and whom
I knew very well from having tried a couple of cases before him
and a lot of motion work when he was the law and motion judge for
many years. He was a very fine judge.

The word was out around city hall that I was to be appointed
to Don King's seat. I walked in on Brown in his chambers, and he
said, "Welcome to our court." He knew about it already. It Just
looked like a done deal. And then Jerry didn't make the
appointment. He didn't make any of these appointments. And he
procrastinated or vacillated or had some intriguing schemes to
balance all of these appointments off, which of course are
political plums.

The days went by and there was no word. And there were a
lot of people waiting. And the days continued to go by and there
was no word. So finally, I thought it just wasn't going to
happen. And at that time, Julie and I had a practice of every
year, between Christmas and New Year's going up to Sea Ranch with
the children, and we were going to do that that year. Instead of

239

waiting around for this appointment, I decided we were going to
go to Sea Ranch anyway, and I left word at the governor's office
where I could be reached.

There's a Department of Forestry fire station at Sea Ranch,
one of these Schedule A stations, under contract, and I would
leave word at the fire station where I could be found if we were
out fishing or something, and they could get in touch with them.
In fact, I think I had a little two-way radio. I really was very
anxious about this because I didn't have a job, and I didn't know
what I was going to do after Brown's term ended.

I think it was about 3:00 A.M., it was a Thursday night.
His term went to the third or fourth of January because of the
way the clock runs in the constitution. It's the first Monday
after the first Sunday or something like that. And so he had a
few more days into the year of 1983 to make appointments than
would ordinarily be the case. His term just didn't end at
midnight, December thirty-first. I think it was January first or
second at about 3:00 A.M. the phone rang, and Julie and I were
asleep, and it was the governor on the phone.

It was him personally, and he said, "I've been thinking
about the San Francisco appointment," and he said, "I'm getting
jammed in San Francisco." Those were his words, and he didn't
explain what they meant. He said, "I've got a new appointment in
Contra Costa County. You'd love it out there, the schools are
great, housing's nice, the weather's wonderful. How would you
like to be appointed in Contra Costa County?"

I said, "I don't know anything about Contra Costa County. I
don't have any political base out there; I don't know any of the
people." The only person I really knew was one of the judges,
[Richard L.] Dick Patsey, who was an old acquaintance and a good
friend. I said, "When would I have to stand for election?"

He said, "You have to stand within two years, because in a
new seat you have to stand for the first general election that
comes along, and that would be June of "84."

So I would be in office and running for office immediately,
which was not to my liking particularly. And in a politically
unknown landscape for me. So I called Dick Patsey and rolled him
out of bed around three-thirty, and I told the governor I was
calling him. I said, "I don't know whether I'd like that idea,
but I'll call up my friend Dick Patsey and see what he says."

Dick said, "Call him back right now." He said, "You are not
going to get reelected out here. It is a very reactionary

240

county; you'll be perceived as a carpetbagger. The local
newspaper is run by a flaming reactionary who will dredge up all
your background with the Garry [Charles Garry, of Garry, Dreyfus,
McTernan, and Brotsky] firm, and you're going to be in real
trouble."

So I called—and the governor had said call him right back.
He gave me a direct number, and I called, and he picked up the
phone himself. You could hear murmuring sleepy voices in the
background. [Laughter]

Lage: Was his a murmuring sleepy voice?

Pesonen: No, he loves this. You could tell. The governor loves this
high-adrenaline, emergency way of doing things.

Lage: Maybe that's why he put off the appointments?

Pesonen: It could be; maybe he gets a high out of it. [Laughter]

So I said, "It's not going to work, Jerry. I'm not going to
get reelected, according to Dick Patsey, and I'm concerned about
that."

He said, "Well, I've already signed the commission so there
isn't anything to be done but make the best of it."

Swearing-in Ceremonies, Sacramento and Martinez

Pesonen: We cut short our trip at Sea Ranch and fled back to Berkeley
and--

Lage: Started your election campaign.

Pesonen: Well, no. I had to get sworn in before the deadline. So he made
a lot--I don't know how many, but lots and lots—of these last-
minute appointments all about the same time, and so we were being
sworn in en masse in Sacramento. Cruz Reynoso, who was on the
state supreme court at that time and who later lost reelection
himself, with [Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court] Rose
Bird, and who was also an acquaintance of mine, was swearing in
all of the new judges. We didn't even have an extra car at that
point, so I took the Greyhound bus to Sacramento. It was cold
and rainy and dismal, and I walked over to the capitol. I
figured that there were so many judges getting appointed there

241

was going to be a couple from San Francisco, and I'll find a ride
home with someone.

We were scheduled in fifteen-minute intervals, like getting
your physical when you're drafted. Reynoso would administer the
oath, and then he'd say, "Would you like to say a few words?" and
there would be a small gathering of the bedraggled family and
friends in the antechamber of the governor's office. I think
there's a big conference room right after you go into the
governor's suite. I said something milquetoasty about how
pleased I was with the honor and so forth. Then I went and
waited and watched who was being sworn in and from where, to go
and nab somebody for a ride home. [laughter]

The next batch included a municipal court judge in San
Francisco. His name was [Joseph] Joe Desmond. Desmond took the
oath and then was asked whether he wanted to say a few remarks,
and he got up and said, "Yes, I'm just goddamned glad Jerry got
around to it!" [laughter] I said, "That's my man," and I went
up and told him who I was and told him my circumstances and he
said, "Sure, come on. We'll go home."

Well, his wife waited in the car, outside--
Lage: While he ran in and--

Pesonen: --while he ran in. He was a sole practitioner who had been

around the criminal courts for a long time and was part of that
old Irish mafia in San Francisco. The car was beat up, the
windshield wipers didn't work, and the upholstery was coming out
of it, and the windows were all foggy, and we headed out toward
the [San Francisco] Bay Area on Interstate 80. I was sitting in
the back, and he threw me an old, dirty towel and asked me to
wipe the fog off the rear window. His wife had a big, grand,
bouffant hairdo, and he had cigarette ashes all down his tie.
They were something else, and he was a funny guy.

We got about as far as Davis, and he turned around and he
said, "What did you say your name was again?" and I told him. He
said, "I heard of you. You're that anti-nuke guy." He said, "I
was just talking to," and he mentioned the governor's brother-in-
law who's married to Kathleen Brown and they'd had dinner--!
can't remember his first name, Kelly is his last name, I think--
and he was an attorney for PG&E. He said, "I was talking to him
the other day and he said, "Hell, Jerry's got to appoint Pesonen
to keep him out of our fucking hair!'" [Laughter]

Lage: That's a good story.

242

Pesonen: Well, we had a nice, visit in the car, and he dropped me off in

Berkeley. Then I made arrangements for the following work day to
go out and meet the presiding judge in Martinez, where the court
is. I called Dick Patsey and got directions. I think I had been
to that court once, years before, on some little divorce case
that I did when I was in the Garry offices, but I couldn't
remember how to get there.

Of course, it was all over the papers. It was in sort of a
mass of Jerry Brown's last-minute appointments, packing the
courts with his liberal cronies. That was the tone of it.

Lage: Even though, as you tell it, it was more a question of delay
rather than getting things together at the last minute.

Pesonen: Right. But that's the way the story played, as I recall it, in
the Contra Costa press and in the rest of the Bay Area press.

Well, the presiding judge was William Channell, who was a
very nice man and a real gentleman. He welcomed me to the court,
and he was cordial and helpful and gave me a lot of tips on how
to get started. He seemed to have all of the time in the world
to spend with me, not the reception I feared at all. I'm not
sure I was as cordially received by some of the other judges as I
was by Channell, but nobody was hostile.

There was another appointment out there at the same time.
There were two of us appointed at the same time, [Theodore] Ted
Merrill. He had been a criminal defense lawyer out there at--I
think the firm was Thiessen, Gagen, McCoy and Merrill in
Danville. We were sworn in at the same time in a big ceremony in
the supervisor's chambers, and I asked [Senator] John Nejedly to
speak for me and Jesse Choper, who was then the dean of the Boalt
Hall School of Law. And Rose Bird called up and wanted to come
because I knew Rose, too.

Lage: Was this sort of routine, that you have people there to--

Pesonen: You have people there to say a few remarks. It's a ceremony more
than anything else. A lot of people show up.

Well, the first crisis was whether Rose Bird should show up,
because she was not popular in Contra Costa County. I asked Dick
Patsey and he said, "If you can keep Rose from coming, you ought
to do it." I said, "Well, I can't do that. She wants to come
and she is paying her respects to me--"

Lage:

She wasn't sensitive to the political implications?

243

Pesonen: I don't think she cared. So I declined to suggest that Rose not,
and she did show up and it caused a bit of a stir in the
audience. Rose Bird was there, and it wasn't missed by anybody
either.

Lage: Was it commented on in the papers?
Pesonen: I don't remember whether it was or not.

Preparing for the Bench, Hearing Cases

Pesonen: The ceremony went fine, and we took pictures and, you know, what
they do in those things. Then I decided I was going to go to
work--

Lage: And be a judge--

Pesonen: --and be a judge.

Lage: --which you hadn't been before.

Pesonen: Which I hadn't been before. There is a school for judges, run by
the state. But you don't go to it for like six months. I don't
think I attended it until summer.

Lage: Is that routine, to attend it?

Pesonen: It's mandatory. But you get a lot of experience before you go to
the school. I hadn't practiced law for four years, I hadn't read
the evidence code for four years. I just took Jefferson's
Evidence bench book, which was two big volumes of examples of
evidence problems. The things that judges have to know most are
the rules of order and the rules of procedure. They don't have
to know the substantive law too much. It helps if they do, but
the lawyer's responsibility is to bring the substantive law to
the judge's attention. In trials, the judge has to be able to
rule correctly on admission of evidence and process on the spot.
So I just every night stayed up until two or three in the
morning, reading Jefferson's Evidence bench book, and it was a
wonderful experience. I mean, I learned a lot of law that I had
never known before. I learned to figure out the hearsay rule,
which had always confused me a little bit.

I picked as my mentor—it's a custom that a new judge can
select an older judge to be an advisor on the spot. In the
middle of the trial, if some difficult question comes up,

244

including a question about your political career, how things are
going to look or what's ethical or what's the appropriate
procedure for a judge, you can recess, call your mentor and he'll
drop what he's doing, even if he's in the middle of a jury trial,
and help you out.

Lage: So that's an official kind of mentorship?

Pesonen: It's a custom in the court. I don't know whether all courts do
it, but the Contra Costa court does it and I think it's a--it's
not mandated by law, legislated, it's an outgrowth of history and
experience.

I had--I picked as my mentor Coleman Fannin, who had been on
that court a long time and was a quite colorful character. He
came from west county and supposedly had good political sense.
He had been a Reagan appointee to the court. He was a very close
friend of Dick Patsey's, and Patsey recommended him, and I liked
him. He was very helpful to me. He's a wonderful man.

Lage: How large a court is it? How many judges?

Pesonen: There were fifteen. I was the fifteenth judge. It was a new

seat created. Up until that time, there were fourteen. I think
it's up to eighteen now.

I began to recognize that there were cliques within the
court as there are with any institutions. There were people with
lesser or greater competence, some people didn't like each other.
There were cliques and alliances, probably not unique to that
court and I'm sure at every other court.

Lage: I had the impression that you were working sort of as an
individual.

Pesonen: Well, yes, but there's a lot of business of the court that's done
by the judges as a committee. The presiding judge presides over
those meetings, too. We had regular meetings. Channell presided
over the assignment of cases, assignment of staff, the budget-
there was a courthouse budget, and we had to get it through both
the Board of Supervisors—part of it through the Board of
Supervisors. You know, your space allocations, what courtrooms
you have. There is a lot of just housekeeping that affects the
quality of life of the judges.

Then the courts had local rules governing filing dates,
assignment of cases for law and motion work, allocation of
criminal cases, who gets what kind of jury cases; all kinds of

245

things. I attended those meetings, and I was bewildered at how
much business there is that is behind those closed doors.

I began to feel that while our people were superficially
friendly, there was always some trouble out there.

Lage: Even among all of the judges?

Pesonen: No. They didn't go out of their way to cause me any trouble, but
they also didn't go out of their way to help me, because within
weeks of my appointment, a colorful lawyer out there, who was
well known, had filed a lawsuit to throw me out of office on the
grounds that I had not been a resident of the county and that the
constitution required that I be a resident of the county at the
time of the appointment, and it was an illegal appointment. That
got a lot of publicity.

Lage: Now, did you move out there?

Pesonen: I moved immediately. Julie and I separated right at that time,
and I moved to Point Richmond, which was in the county.

So I had this; my marriage torn apart, and I had the kids on
weekends, and I was trying to be a new judge, and I got sued. It
was called a quo warranto action, I think, a Latin term for suing
on behalf of the public.

Lage: And you, yourself, were sued?

Pesonen: I was named and the governor was named, but I was the object of
it, obviously. Maurice Moyal was that lawyer's name, M-0-Y-A-L.
Maurice had a thick French accent; he had come from Nigeria or
someplace. He had a divorce practice, mainly, and he was a
flamboyant, colorful character. Not a very good lawyer in my
opinion. I think he was outraged that Governor Brown had
appointed somebody from outside the county. He didn't really
care that it was Brown and my liberal background, it was just he
wanted it kept in the community, in the neighborhood.

So I didn't know what to do.
Lage: Did you think the suit had grounds?

Pesonen: No, I didn't think so, but 1 had to have a lawyer. I met a

wonderful man, named David Levy, who had been in the county a
long time and was respected by everybody as a thorough-going,
gentle, intelligent kind of a person, and also a very good
lawyer. He represented a lot of cities. That was one of his
specialties. He was also a survivor of the Bataan Death March.

246

He had a wonderful sense of humor. He was just the ideal picture
of a patrician, gentle lawyer in the last century; an Abe Lincoln
type. He volunteered to represent me for nothing.

Lage: That was a show of support.

Pesonen: It was a strong show of support. There was another judge who was
sued at the same time. He was a municipal court judge in
Danville, who also had- -he lived in the county, but not in the
municipal court's district. That was an even weaker case. So he
sued us both and it was all over the Lesher papers.

Lage: Now the Lesher papers are what?

Pesonen: The Contra Costa Times.

Lage: And Dean Lesher is the publisher? [Lesher died in spring 1993.]

Pesonen: Dean Lesher is the publisher and the ruling patriarch. He owns
the whole thing, and it reflects his views. He's a very
aggressive businessman, and it's been a very successful
newspaper. But he's also an enormous reactionary. [Pause]

So Levy and I decided that we would talk to Moyal first .
And Moyal really just needed somebody to pay attention to him.
Levy and I took him to lunch one day in an attorney's restaurant
there in Martinez. He talked about his kids, and he'd had a lot
of trouble with his kids; they had gotten in a lot of trouble
with the law. We showed a lot of sympathy to him, and he dropped
the suit. [laughter]

Lage: As simple as that?

Pesonen: Yes. It was about as simple as that.

Lage: He decided you were an OK guy.

Pesonen: He decided I was OK, and he dropped it. He didn't drop it

against the other judge, because he didn't like him, but he liked
Levy, and he turned out liking me. So we squirreled it away.
The case went away, but the melody lingered on.

Lage: It remained in the paper?

Pesonen: That's right. So here I had come into office with a lot of

adverse publicity, and Moyal 's lawsuit kept, it alive. So I was
wearing this cloak of this controversial post from the day I went
to the court.

247

Well, I started being a judge. I started hearing cases.
Civil cases and a lot of criminal cases. My sense is that the
word started getting around that I was a pretty good judge and
that I was fair. I wasn't a liberal wild-eyed crazy out there.
I began to feel a lot of support coming from the bar. I was a
judge they could count on to give them a fair shake.

Two Politically Crucial Sentencing Decisions

Lage: You were seeing a lot of criminal cases?

Pesonen: None of them were real high-profile murder cases or anything, but
some armed robberies and drug cases.

Lage: Now, you said that's not often done with a new judge?

Pesonen: I don't know whether it's done in other courts or not. If the
establishment of the court wants to protect the new judge, they
will keep him away from criminal cases because those are the ones
that can blow up in your face, politically. You can make a
mistake in sentencing, and the person goes out and commits
another crime, and it's all over the papers that this judge
turned this criminal loose on the community. They are
politically risky. But that's what I got. I didn't get big,
high-visibility, politically risky cases, but all criminal cases,
to some extent, for a judge in these times when people are much
less reticent about running against incumbent judges, are risky.

I didn't feel that I wanted to be a law and order judge just
to protect my job. I was going to continue to call them as I saw
them. I called two cases against the advice of Richard Arnason,
who was the dean of the criminal court out there. He felt very
possessive about the criminal cases, and I would sometimes ask
him for advice. The sentencing law is very complicated. The
legislature had passed the determinate sentencing act1 maybe
seven or eight years earlier. It was a very complicated program
and most of the judges didn't really understand it. Arnason
understood it.

Lage:

It restricted your ability to--

'Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act, S.B. 42, 1975-1976 Reg. Sess.
Cal. Stat., ch. 1139 (1976).

248

Pesonen: It restricted your discretion in sentencing severely, but it also
imposed mandatory obligations in sentencing with formulas for
calculating the amount of time in prison based on prior offenses
and the nature of the offense, whether a weapon was involved or a
police officer was involved. There were a lot of factors, and
they all worked different ways, and you had to study big manuals
to figure out how to properly and legally impose a sentence. You
had some discretion but not a whole lot. It was just
complicated. And it was just another big area of the law to
learn, and there weren't any computer programs. Now they have
computer programs; you plug in all the records, and they tell you
what the sentence is supposed to be. [laughter] They didn't
have that then.

Lage: You had a clerk. Was he helpful?

Pesonen: The clerk didn't know.

Lage: The clerk didn't do things like that?

Pesonen: The clerk didn't know those things. A clerk wouldn't be expected
to.

Lage: But to research it?

Pesonen: I had to research it.

Lage: You had to do this yourself?

Pesonen: Yes. But sometimes I really didn't know the answer, and I had to
go to Arnason. Some were simple.

As I look back on it, I made two sentencing decisions which
were terrible mistakes. I probably would have done them the same
way over again, but they did turn out to be political handicaps.
One involved an elderly Hispanic man who shot up a Mexican
artifact store and all of the pottery because he got into a
struggle with the shop owner with whom he had a dispute, because
the shop owner's son was harassing the assailant's daughter. It
wasn't a robbery, and no one was hurt, fortunately. The whole
community turned out for this old man to keep him out of state
prison, including the bishop of the church. I got letters from
all over the place about that he was a sweet, simple man who had
never been in trouble. Thirty years before he had had a hand in
a burglary or something, but it was when he was a young man and
he now had his own children. This was one of these emotional,
interfamily disputes, and nobody got hurt, fortunately; some
merchandise got busted up. So I didn't send him to prison; I put
him on probation.

249

Lage: Now, was that within your determinate sentencing options?
Pesonen: I sentenced him to community service, lots of community service.

Well, that hit the papers: "Gunman Sent for Community
Service" was the way the story went. In fact, later on, when I
was still a judge, I was assigned to the Richmond court which
handled non-jury cases, and there were a lot of domestic disputes
out there. He showed up in my court representing one of these
disputants and helping them mediate a domestic dispute, and he
was really very good as a mediator. So in substance that was a
success; politically it was a mistake. And I would do that again
the same way.

There was another one where there was a fellow who was
involved with drugs, selling amphetamines, who had a record as a
juvenile and now he was close to thirty years old and appeared to
be finally getting his life in order. He had been back to school
and straightened himself out. I gave him the benefit of the
doubt, and he was back in jail within a few months on another
drug charge.

Well, here I had turned a chronic drug manufacturer loose on
the community again, and I obviously didn't know what I was doing
because he didn't make it.

Those two cases were very frequently in the paper as
examples of the kind of crazy, criminal-oriented judge that Jerry
had appointed out there. So from the day I started, I knew I was
running a political campaign, and I started putting one together.

Lage: Two years in advance?

Pesonen: Two years--a year and a half in advance. I was going to every
[Contra Costa County] bar gathering, every political gathering,
and of course my base would be in the Democratic party. So I was
cultivating everybody. [laughter]

Lage: You must have been pretty busy with all of this.
Pesonen: I was pretty busy.

Lage: You must have been pretty busy trying to learn to be a judge and
run your campaign at the same time.

Pesonen: I was pretty busy. I didn't have a very satisfactory living

arrangement. I was trying to find a decent apartment in Point
Richmond, and that was hard. I didn't have much money--! didn't
have any money--a beat-up old car, a Peugeot diesel that rattled

250

in the parking lot and made a lot of smoke. That was a strange
time. And I had to be there on time; I had jury cases every day.
I had a wonderful staff whom I still get together with every
year. I really liked that staff, and they were very helpful to

me .

I was put into an old courtroom. It wasn't really a
courtroom; it was the basement of a veterans hall, and it was
just an auditorium, where the veterans group would come and have
card games on Monday night, so Tuesday morning we would come in
and the place would be full of stale cigar smoke and beer,
[laughter] It had bare wooden floors, and people would come down
the stairs, and the place would rattle and echo. It had no air
conditioning, and it was hot out there so we'd throw the windows
open. The jury sat in hard-backed chairs--

Lage: This was your courtroom?
Pesonen: This was my courtroom.
Lage: You didn't get moved around?

Pesonen: No, I was in that courtroom as long as I was in Martinez. Unless
some other judge went on vacation, and I got to go use a decent
courtroom. But the basement of the veteran's building was my
courtroom, Department 15.

So it wasn't limousine treatment exactly.
Lage: Did you like the work? Being a judge?

Pesonen: I loved juries. I found it interesting, and it was challenging.
It was not a simple job. It is confining. Your time is not your
own. People think judges goof off a lot; judges work very hard,
and to keep up with the case load you are spending a lot of time
in the evening.

Putting Together a Political Campaign

Pesonen: And then I had the political campaign to put together on top of
that. I got a lot of help from people. [William] Bill Gagen,
who was a well-known lawyer out there, offered to help on my
campaign.

I think I made one very serious political mistake, and I
might still be a judge if I hadn't done that. Contra Costa

251

County had gone through, since the Second World War, enormous
changes. It used to be the rust belt — the industrial belt—of
the Bay Area. The whole shoreline from the Chevron refinery in
Richmond all the way around to Antioch were steel mills and pulp
mills, and there was a strong union base, strong Democratic base.
But over the years, of course, those demographics had declined
and the so-called Lamorinda area- -Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda--
Walnut Creek, Concord, and even starting out into the Delta and
down the San Ramon Valley- -had developed and that was where the
population shift had come, and it was much more conservative.

So I picked Bert Coffey as my campaign manager. Coffey was
an old-line Democrat. He was really out of touch with the rest
of the county. His power—he was kind of a legendary figure in
running campaigns in west county, which was not where the
population base was anymore.

Lage: And you were running countywide?

Pesonen: I had to run countywide. My finance chairman was a Republican
lawyer in Richmond who represented the Mechanics Bank, Fran
Watson. His firm had been the prominent firm in the west county
for a long time, but it was in something of a decline. Watson
didn't want to do it, I think. I think he did it mainly on
Coleman Fannin's urging. So I focussed my campaign on people in
west county, when the votes were not all in west county. But I
didn't know enough about Contra Costa Counly to know that that
was a mistake until I look back on it now. I think if I hadn't
been something of a person who they wanted to keep a little
distance from out there--.

And I think the other judges felt I was vulnerable and
didn't want to get too close. Judges like to keep their jobs.
But politically I stood for a new, foreign substance thrust into
their presence. It hadn't happened before like that. And being
vulnerable, it just made them uncomfortable and in a way that I'm
not sure they were even alert to. They didn't know why they were
uncomfortable, or if they did they didn't articulate it to me,
anyway .

But I certainly sensed it, and I knew the reasons for it and
I appreciated what the reasons were. I didn't resent them. I
suppose if I had been a long-time judge who wanted to keep my Job
long enough to retire, I'd be a little uneasy, too, about this
youngster carrying all of this baggage.

[Senator John] Nejedly was a strong source of support. I
had known him in the legislature, and he knew of my forestry
background, and we just liked each other. So a campaign

252

committee started coming together. The rumor was that somebody
out of the district attorney's office was being groomed to run
against me and that he would have a lot of support from the
right-wing money in this state. H. L. Richardson had left the
senate by that time and I think he was running an organization in
southern California whose job was to get rid of liberal judges
and give their opponents money.

Well, I was successful enough with this big party at
Nejedly's--

Lage: Is that the one that Jack Lemmon came to?

Pesonen: No, Jack Lemmon came to the second one. The first one was in the
summer of '83, and it was a big party with lots of people. It
was cheap to get in. The point was to get a lot of people there.
Everybody likes to be at Nejedly's place; it sits on the top of a
hill overlooking the whole Walnut Creek/ San Ramon Valley; it has
a big swimming pool.

It was a nice party. Quite a few people showed up, and it
was well catered, and I made a good appearance. Julie came, the
kids came, and so I didn't look like such a crazy. I began to
look successful. I mean, I had money. I had put money in the
bank for this campaign.

Lage: Money that you raised?

Pesonen: Raised through some direct-mail, some one-on-one solicitations,
which is always delicate for a judge, because most of the money
comes from lawyers.

Lage: That would be delicate.

Pesonen: It's always a problem.

Lage: Lawyers who are going to appear in front of you?

Pesonen: That's right. That's always a problem for judges, but I didn't
see any alternative, and I figured that I could take money from
somebody and still rule against them. Like [Speaker of the
Assembly] Jesse Unruh said, "You drink their whiskey, take their
money, screw their women, and vote against them." [Laughter] So
I didn't feel compromised, but that's me. Maybe I was
compromised. Certainly the appearance is always there.

Lage: But you are not the only one who does it, are you?
Pesonen: No.

253

Lage: It's a standard procedure?

Pesonen: Sure. [Superior Court Judge Demetrios P.] Agretelis is running
for reelection in Alameda County right now and all of his money
comes from lawyers.

Lage: And then do lawyers feel that if they ask they pretty well have
to--

Pesonen: There is some of that pressure, yes. I'm sure there is. I feel
it now, now that I am on the other side. But it's a fact of life
that I didn't know any alternative to. I certainly had no
personal money of my own.

The word began to get out that I had put together a
successful enough list of endorsements and that my reputation at
the bar was good, that I was a good judge, that they decided not
--this person was not going to run against me. By December, that
was the way it looked: that I was going to have an uncontested
election in June of '84.

Serious Illness, Poor Press, Election Loss

Pesonen: Then I got sick, and I ended up in the hospital for several

months, and it looked like I was going to die. I was unable to
function. I couldn't walk. That revived interest that maybe I
was vulnerable after all. [laughs]

Lage: The vultures started to circle.

Pesonen: The vultures started to circle. So I lay in the hospital bed and
read the papers, and there wasn't anything I could do about it.
The filing date came and I had an opponent, [Richard] Rick Flier,
who was a young attorney in the district attorney's office.

Lage: Not the same one who had been going to run?

Pesonen: Well, I wasn't sure who was going to run. His name had been
rumored as one of the possibilities.

There wasn't anything I could do. I couldn't get out of
bed. My foot was in terrible shape and--

Lage: This was an infection?

254

Pesonen: I had an infection that I let go too long. I was trying a very
difficult case out in Richmond, and I wanted it over with, and I
felt just terrible. I didn't go to the doctor; I would just
collapse after a day in court and then go back the next day and
feel pretty good in the morning and then collapse at the end of
the day. By that weekend, at the end of that week, I woke up
with excruciating pain in this foot. I was living alone in a
little shack out there in Point Richmond that I had rented
temporarily, didn't have a phone--the phone hadn't been installed
yet--and it was out in the park, there were no people around, so
there wasn't any way to get help. It was so painful, I couldn't
walk. I had to crawl to the car and work the clutch with a broom
handle .

I stopped at one of these roadside phones and called Julie
and told her what was going on and said I wanted some crutches so
I could get to the hospital. She took me down to Kaiser, and
they looked me over and decided it was gout. I was totally
incapacitated by the pain, so I went back and stayed at Julie's
house, and I kept going back each day and it got worse. They
said, "Well, we'll give you another gout medicine, and then it'll
work." The fourth day—the fourth or fifth day--I woke up and I
had big red streaks up my leg and down my arms and I had a raging
blood poisoning that had metastasized into my heart, and I just
went into a coma.

I was out for I don't know how long, and once I was an
emergency case for Kaiser, they took very good care of me.

Lage: But they weren't too swift on the original diagnosis.

Pesonen: They weren't too swift on the original diagnosis. So I had to -
have a lot of blood transfusions and major surgery on this foot
to cut this infection out and then a lot of skin grafting. I had
to grow my foot back. They were about to amputate it; they were
real close to amputating it, and I said I didn't want to lose
that foot. I couldn't go fishing anymore if I lost my foot.

So they held on to it, and I finally got well. But I was
campaigning in a wheelchair for a couple of weeks and rolling up
and down the streets of Martinez in a wheelchair. It was just
awful with an election impending.

I raised a lot of money by just calling people and writing
personal notes from my hospital bed. I think the sympathy factor
must have helped. And from people you wouldn't expect.
[Charles] Charlie Kennedy, who is a famous lawyer, well-known
lawyer in San Francisco, for example, who had represented Carroll
in the PG&E/Widener case, the second time around, sent me five

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Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

hundred bucks and wrote me a note. There were a lot of people
that had been opponents in my prior cases. And a lot of people
in the bar. I wasn't getting rich by any means, but I was making
some money. Then we had the Jack Lemmon party. But by then it
was too late.

Somebody told me, I don't remember who, that Richard Arnason
had something to do with it. In any event, Bill Gagen took me to
see Dean Lesher to see if I could, if not get the Contra Costa
Times' endorsement, at least neutralize it. Lesher ushered us
into his office, which is surrounded with art of old West,
bucking broncos and buffaloes; it looked like Ross Perot's
office, Remington paintings and- -he's a very wealthy man, and he
buys all of this junk. We finally were ushered into his office
and he's a huge, obese man. He's not in very good health, I
think, and he's sitting behind a huge desk.

Gagen had been his lawyer in a dispute over some properties,
and Gagen 's a very engaging, very bright lawyer; he's a very fine
lawyer. He's also a very engaging, likeable person. He's the MC
[master of ceremonies] at most of these dinners, and he's sought
after for that kind of thing. He's funny, and he knows
everybody. He knows what's going on, and he's widely respected
in the county and deservedly so.

So he was my entree to Lesher. I just sat down, and Lesher
looked at me for a minute, and he said, "I understand you're a
carpetbagger." The first words out of his mouth.

This was after your illness or during it?

No, this was after the illness. It might have been before.
Things blur a little bit when you go through something like that.
I remember I was in good health when I went in there, so it must
have been shortly before. It was early work. It had to be
before.

Well, the conversation kind of went downhill from there.
Lesher didn't let on what he was going to do.

Did you come right out and ask him to be neutral or was this
just--

Pesonen: No. Gagen made his speech, and he said, "You know why we're

here. Dave's going to have, probably, opposition next year, and
we'd like you to know him so that if you feel inclined to do some
editorial work on this you'll know what you're talking about. I
think you'll find he's a good judge."

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Lage:

Well, Lesher was totally noncommittal. He wasn't openly
hostile. I mean, he laughed when he said this carpetbagger
remark. So the election was Tuesday, I think it was June 7, of
"84, and on Sunday preceding the election there was this huge
editorial in Lesher "s paper about the two cases where I'd made
what he characterized as mistakes in sentencing, turned criminals
loose on the community, that I had represented the Black Panthers
who were advocates of violence and overthrow of our government
and our way of life. It was a real hit piece. I thought, "I'm
going to be real lucky if I get through this election."

And I didn't. It was close, but it wasn't close enough. I
think I got 49 percent. No cigar. Flier got 51 percent. So
then I had to figure out what I was going to do.

We keep referring to this Jack Lemmon thing but we haven't really
said what it is.

Pesonen: Well, we threw another party at Nejedly's house.
Lage: Later on?

Pesonen: Later on. For big money. I think it was $250 or something to
get in and in those days that was big money. I contacted Don
Widener, who was still in touch with Jack Lemmon, and he asked
Jack if Jack would fly up there and appear at this gathering at
Nejedly's, and Jack said sure, he'd be happy to. And he did. He
made a wonderful little speech about the Widener case and what a
great lawyer I was. He remembered I'd go to trial against this
battery of lawyers from big corporations with my little paper bag
lunch on the table. [laughter]

It was very complimentary. Everybody wanted to go to that.
It was the first time anybody in an election campaign in Contra
Costa County had a celebrity like Jack Lemmon appear for him. It
was very well attended. It paid for all of the literature and
the advertising and the signs and all of the things you do in a
campaign like that.

But I was not optimistic. It was a high; it was a wonderful
day, a beautiful, sunny, afternoon and Jack was in great form.
Julie picked him up at the airport, and Widener and his wife came
and that was it.

Lage: Did you make enough so that you didn't end up with a debt?

Pesonen: I didn't end up with a debt. I wasn't going to go in debt,

either. I figured there was a good chance I was going to lose
and I didn't have much money, but I was going to spend it all on

257

the campaign and nothing more than that .
through a decent campaign.

I had enough to get

Of course, we had to file reports with the Fair Political
Practices Commission; there was a lot of administration of the
campaign. Watson's office was very helpful on that. He had a
staff person who was just marvelous. She kept charge of all of
the money and all of the reports and I never had any problems
with that.

Lage: That's good, because that can be a bother.

Pesonen: That was a volunteer effort. [Pause]

Lage: So there you are, out of a job. How much time left?

Pesonen: You have a lot of time.

Lage: Six months?

Pesonen: Six months. You have until the end of the year. So I had June

until the first part of January to figure out what I was going to
do.

Well, the first thing I decided to do was take some time
off. I was just very stressed out from all of this and depressed
at the results. I didn't know what the future held. I got into
a quarrel with the presiding judge at that point. He said I had
to stay on and work just like nothing had happened and I told him
I wasn't going to do it and there wasn't anything he could do
about it. [laughter]

So I patched that up, and I took some time off, and I took
the kids and went on a pack trip in the mountains with Gagen and
some other friends for a week.

Lage: So you recovered pretty well from your leg.

Pesonen: It was a horseback trip. I could walk around. I could hike. It
still hurt; I was not fully recovered. It's still recovering.
Seven years later, it's still getting better.

So I started sending resumes out just like any other job
hunter, without much success because just about everybody thinks
that a judge wants too much money because you're coming in
laterally at a partnership level or something, and most firms
cultivate their youngsters or young associates for their
partnership positions. It's very rare--it happens now and then--
but it was almost unheard of at that time that somebody would

258

come in at a partnership level. So I didn't get too many
favorable responses. I had a few interviews. In the meantime, I
kept on kicking around and running my court.

Pesonen: I finally got a favorable response from two firms, one in Contra
Costa County from people who wanted to bring me in as a partner
and it was a good firm. It was in Concord and it was a growing
firm and it would have been a nice, stable position.

The other was from Jerry Sterns in San Francisco. Sterns
wanted to bring me in as managing attorney—a managing partner--
because his office wasn't very well managed, he felt, and he
wanted somebody to get it organized. It was a firm that had
grown very fast; handled a lot of mass cases, a lot of asbestos
work. The firm's specialty was aircraft litigation—aircraft
crash litigation on the plaintiff's side — and he was very well
known for that. He was a splendid lawyer.

So I started there in January. Bought a house in Berkeley
and got my life back in order.

259

IX EAST BAY REGIONAL PARKS DISTRICT GENERAL MANAGER, 1985-1988:
THE ORGANIZATION AND ITS POLITICS

An Interim Position in Sterns Law Firm

Lage: So we have you back in private life and working at Sterns, Smith,
Walker, Pesonen, and Grell in 1985.

Pesonen: Yes. Stern's office was not well managed. It needed a lot of
work.

Lage: Now, where was the office?

Pesonen: In San Francisco. It was not easy to figure out where all of the
money was. It was a little frustrating, but I took hold and
started getting it organized and getting some systems in place.

Lage: Did this make relationships difficult?

Pesonen: No.

Lage: You didn't have to stir things up?

Pesonen: I wasn't there to stir things up. I was there to--. Sterns
wasn't around much. There wasn't anybody in place to give
guidance to running the firm. He was out trying cases off in
London and around the world. He had an office in Hawaii; he
liked it over there so he was not very accessible sometimes, and
people felt a bit adrift.

It had possibilities. He had one mass case which had
languished. It hadn't really had the attention it deserved. It
involved over a hundred families down in San Mateo County whose
property values had been badly eroded from huge landslides in
those '81 and '82 floods. Some people had been killed, hills had
come down and wiped their houses out. He had gone down and

260

rounded up a lot of clients down there, and the case just wasn't
going anywhere. It was against everybody in the world. It was
against the developer, the geologist, even the Archdiocese of San
Francisco which owned part of one of the hills. They were
claiming this was an act of God. [laughter]

There were about fifteen defendants who had been involved in
one way or another in the development of this housing tract. It
was a very interesting case. It was interesting geology and
hydrology. But mainly what it needed was getting it all together
and moving it. So I got appointed lead counsel for the
plaintiffs by the superior court in San Mateo County, and I
pulled it together and got it ready to be settled. It settled
right about the time I left, it turned out, in the summer of '85.

Hired by the Park District; Reorganizing the Staff

Pesonen: I hadn't been there very long before Harlan Kessel of the board

of the [East Bay Regional] Park District called me up one day and
said that the general manager, [Richard C.] Dick Trudeau was
retiring, and would I be interested in applying for the position
of general manager of the park district. That was just
wonderful. So I did fill in an application, and I rounded up
some letters of recommendation and I had some credentials that
looked pretty good in comparison to some of the other candidates,
I guess.

Lage: Was this a nationwide search?

Pesonen: It was a nationwide search. They had a search firm, one of these
outfits that does executive searches. I went through a number of
interviews. It was a partly political appointment, too. The
board is all elected.

Finally, I got appointed. The appointment was announced in
July, and it took me some time to wind down what I was handling
at Sterns' office, including the mass landslide case down in San
Mateo County. So I don't think I started at the park district
until the end of August.

Lage: Now, in the course of all of this interviewing, what was your
sense of what they were looking for and--?

Pesonen: They were looking for somebody who could completely reform the
organization. Trudeau had quite a different management style,
from what I understand. Trudeau was at odds with the board. I

261

think he was not happy about his retirement; it wasn't entirely
voluntary.

Lage: He'd been there a while.

Pesonen: He'd been there about twenty years. Seventeen years.

Lage: And then, before that, he was assistant for public relations
under [William Penn] Mott.

Pesonen: Yes, he had headed public relations under Mott. But he was not a
Mott. In fact, I spoke at the Rotary Club in Richmond one time
while I was general manager, and they still thought that Mott had
preceded me. For seventeen years they didn't know who Dick
Trudeau was .

Lage: Even though his background was in public relations?
Pesonen: Yes, but his style was entirely different.
Lage: Different from Mott's or different from yours?

Pesonen: Different from both. [laughter] He liked to work behind the

scenes, and the board and he were not comfortable with each other
anymore. Trudeau was no help to me. He didn't want me to be
appointed; he had his own candidate. I had some reason to
believe and some evidence that he tried to stop it. But he was
not successful in that. His influence with the board was pretty
eroded by then.

Lage: Was the board clear in what it wanted from you?

Pesonen: No, it wasn't clear what it wanted. There was no job

description, they didn't offer me a contract. It was just sort
of serve at their pleasure and fix the place. Fix it.

Lage: Just very vague.
Pesonen: Yes.

So it was a wide-open charter that I was handed. I didn't
realize--. When I look back over my life, whatever mistakes I've
made have usually been out of ignorance or naivete, more naivete
than ignorance, but both, and I was not aware of how deep the
divisions were in that board.

The first thing I was expected to do was a major
reorganization, which I undertook. I reoriented the lines of
authority with a strong emphasis on natural resource protection

262

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:

and created a new section called land stewardship, which pulled
together scattered functions that were at all different levels:
some with the union, some in management, some out in the field,
some in the office — all having to do with geology, hydrology,
fisheries, water quality, forestry. I put them all under one
head and called it land stewardship. I brought in a new person,
Kevin Shea, who had a natural resource background and a writing
background and some administrative ability to head that up. He
headed it up until he retired just last year.

Did you get a sense that things were in sort of disarray?

Oh yes. The organizational structure didn't make any sense. It
looked like a history of patchwork cronyism. There were some
people who were not very competent, who were just not doing
anything. The head of public relations, as far as I could tell,
hadn't done anything for years.

My approach was to interview everybody and have a long
interview, and the question was, "What do you do, how have you
done it, and what have you done that is lasting?" I got good
answers from some people and not from others.

Whenever you move into a position like that, you seek out
people you can trust, whose judgment you can trust, who have an
institutional history. You get your education that way.

He was forthcoming if

Who did you find?

Jerry Kent, who had been there forever,
you knew what to ask him.

He was assistant manager under Trudeau--

Under Trudeau.

--under you, and is still assistant manager?

Still assistant general manager. He handles all of the field
operations. He has an immensely detailed memory of everything
that's ever happened since Mott's day.

Bob Owen was another person. And I brought in Bob Connelly,
briefly--! created a position for him as a chief deputy general
manager.

Lage:

Now, he had been a deputy in--

263

Pesonen: He had been chief deputy director in the Department of Forestry.
The district's relations with Sacramento were not very good. The
district gets a lot of its money from grants and so on, and
there's always legislation that affects the district. I thought
Bob could handle that. Bob also had a lot of administrative
skills, and the police department of the parks district was in
disarray. It was just out of control. The chief was not doing
anything. Overtime was enormous. It seemed to be erratic;
whenever an officer needed to make a boat payment he'd run up
some overtime. Its budget was out of control.

Lage: But you could see these problems rather quickly.

Pesonen: Yes. It took me five or six months to get some priorities on
them. But I wasn't watching my backside with the board.

Political Controversies and the Politics on the EBRPD Board

Pesonen: There were some political controversies going on, the Berkeley
Shakespeare Festival, for example, which wanted to move into
Tilden Park. Mary Jefferds, who was on the board, would never
make it clear whether she wanted the Shakespeare Festival there
or not. She wanted to play both sides, and I made the mistake of
talking to one of the participants against her directions not to
talk to one of the people who was an activist in that campaign.
She found out about it, and that was enough for her.

Something came up where they decided that they wanted to
have a vote of confidence. This was after I had been there about
a year, and I didn't anticipate much problem, and to my
astonishment, Mary Jefferds voted to get rid of me. By this
time, I had offended Harlan Kessel enormously, which ain't hard
to do.

Lage: What--

Pesonen: Well, Harlan had an agenda. Much of this is such recent history
I am a little uneasy talking about it, but--

Lage: Well, if they are things that are important that you don't want
made public at this time, we can seal a portion.

Pesonen: Well, there was an employee who was a black man, an elderly black
man, who absolutely did nothing and was protected by Harlan and
had been for many years. He was an embarrassment within the

264

organization. You would give him a task, and he'd disappear for
days.

Lage: He was in the office, not out in the field?
Pesonen: Well, it was sort of vague where his office was.

And he wanted more money. He was also the chairman of the
Hayward NAACP, and every year that Harlan came up for election- -
every time Harlan came up for election—he 'd get the endorsement
of the Hayward NAACP, which consists of about six people, I
think. Harlan began to put a lot of pressure on me to see that
person was elevated to a much higher position in management. I
kept resisting and delaying and stalling and finding ways not to
do it. I knew that it would just infuriate the rest of the staff
because they knew he didn't do anything, and he couldn't do
anything. But Harlan kept saying how competent and wonderful he
was and what a great job he did. He never did anything.

Lage: Did you confront Harlan directly on this?

Pesonen: Obliquely, I would. I wanted to hold on to Harlan 's support.
But Harlan began to see that I was never going to do what he
wanted me to do for this person. He wanted the guy to get a
salary close to the general manager's salary. It was ridiculous.

I think there were some other problems. I got crosswise
with a woman who was very active in the park advisory committee.
Afton Crooks her name was. She was with the University.

Lage: Now, what was the park advisory committee?

Pesonen: The park advisory committee is the group that--. It's really a
device that the park board members have of putting people in a
place where they feel they have some influence over the park
district. The park advisory committee looks at the general
plans; they hold meetings once a month in which they discuss
various issues in the park and pass resolutions. Sometimes the
board pays attention to them, sometimes it doesn't.

But Afton was chair of the park advisory committee, and an
issue at that time was the issue of mitigation in development
projects. Apparently Trudeau had offended the park district, or
offended its political constituency, the activist constituency,
the Afton Crooks of the world. There was a small group of people
who watched that park district like a hawk. Trudeau had made
deals with developers down in the expanding south Alameda County
area around Pleasanton, in which the park district would
politically support, or not oppose, various kinds of developments

265

in exchange for mitigation given to the park district: land,
money, other kinds of things that were useful.

Lage: Is some of this around the Sunol Regional Park?

Pesonen: Yes, the Sunol park area is part of it. Trudeau, over the years,
had cultivated and become quite close to some very prominent,
wealthy developer people, or bankers or lawyers down in southern
Alameda County. Some of these had backfired. The project was so
offensive to the environmental constituency that watched the park
district that there was no mitigation that was acceptable to
them, so they saw this as a sellout by the management of the park
district.

One involved a huge gravel mining pit that still hasn't been
started, in which the developer, De Silva, agreed to transplant
tule elk in Sunol and give royalties off of his gravel to the
park district for many years. That was a very controversial
project.

Lage: Were you put in the middle of these decisions, or were they done
deals?

Pesonen: They were done deals, but the park advisory committee had

proposed a resolution, a board resolution which would govern the
conduct of the administration of the park district, that no more
mitigation could happen unless it went through an elaborate
process, which was so elaborate you never could get it through.

Well, I didn't know enough about it to know whether this was
a good policy or not, so I suggested it be put off for a year.
And a lot of mitigation made sense. There were a lot of projects
which the park district couldn't influence — its political
influence would be insignificant- -where the park district could
get something from mitigation.

So I didn't think that the suggested process was very
helpful. In fact, the Ferry Point acquisition was, in effect,
mitigation. Nobody's ever called it that. Everybody liked the
project so much they didn't realize it was mitigation so the
procedure was never applied to it.

Lage: Yes, a blanket prohibition of mitigation seems a little —

Pesonen: It didn't go that far, but it made it almost impossible to
approve a mitigation.

Well, I got crosswise with Afton when I opposed early
adoption of that policy because Afton was the real author and

266

proponent, and she was very aggressive about it.
like what I did on that.

She just didn't

There were a number of other things. Part of it was my
style, too. I was not suited for that position. Mott had been
able to get away with running the district when the board was
window-dressing, but those times--.

Lage: Was that the times, or was that Mott?

Pesonen: I think it was both. I think part of it was Mott's style. Mott
had political ability, sensitivity about dealing with elected
boards, which I didn't have. You know, I thought I had been
given a job to run the place. I didn't realize how much intrigue
there was politically on the board.

Lage: It sounds as if the board was closely involved with matters large
and small.

Pesonen: It was matters large and small, but I was not good at cultivating
the board. I didn't spend a lot of time holding their hand,
calling them up and schmoozing them; I was busy running the
district. I spent a lot of time out in the field, I paid a lot
of attention to field morale and what was going on in the field
and-- .

Lage: But the changes you were making in the organization must have had
quite an effect on morale, I would think.

Pesonen: Well, most of it was positive after it was over. There were some
people at the top who shouldn't have been there any more, who
left, but in the field, I strengthened the field organization,
and lines of authority in headquarters were much clearer. I was
accessible in a way that Trudeau had never been, and I treated
people nicely.

Lage: So often, when you do a reorganization like this, people are so
insecure about their jobs or--

Pesonen: Well, there is always a period of insecurity until it settles

down. It settled down, I think, fairly well. Other people may
have a different perspective on that, but I firmly believe that.

And there were some people who got hurt in it and never
forgot it.

Lage: Who stayed with the district?

Pesonen: Some who stayed with the district and some who didn't.

267

Well, but I didn't cultivate the board in the way that I
should have if job security was foremost in my mind. While job
security was certainly important to me, doing a good job was just
as important, as I saw it, and maybe doing a good job involves
schmoozing the board more than I did. I probably wasn't
temperamentally, at that time, anyway, the right person.

And then I made a terrible mistake which was what they were
looking for. I had some enemies on the board after this
beginning, but I still had four or five votes.

Elected Board Members ; Intrigue and Interference

Lage: How many people on the board?

Pesonen: Seven.

Lage: Seven. And Harlan Kessel, who had been a supporter —

Pesonen: --became an enemy.

Lage: And then Mary Jefferds?

Pesonen: Then Mary Jefferds.

Lage: Was she really lost just over that issue of talking to--?

Pesonen: She never said. That's my speculation. Mary was very difficult
to read.

Lage: Had you known her before?

Pesonen: I had known her before.

Lage: She has a reputation for being a good environmentalist.

Pesonen: She had good environmentalist credentials, but by that time she
had been on the board for fifteen or twenty years, a long time,
and she was tired and sick, and she was mean-spirited. She and
Harlan were just cruel to the staff. Every board meeting was an
ordeal.

Lage: You mean, not just you, but they would attack lower staff
members?

268

Pesonen: Yes, they would attack anybody. Anybody who ever stood up before
them and said something they didn't like, they would accuse them
of being incompetent, of cheating, of lying. Every board meeting
was a horrible ordeal of pointlessness and unpleasantness. They
were a very unpleasant bunch of people.

Not all of them. Ted Radke, who was president during part
of the time I was there, was not that way, but he wasn't a very
strong personality, and he couldn't control them. Jim Duncan,
who was from Alameda, was a decent man. He was new to the board.
In fact, I think he was elected about the time I came in, and he
didn't have the political base to control them.

Then they had another crazy, Lynn Bowers, who was really a
nut, from Pleasanton.

Lage: A man or a woman?

Pesonen: A man. He's from Sunol, actually. Bowers was a developer, but
his baby was Pleasanton Ridge, which had been messed-up
politically, and I wanted to get that back on the right track.

Lage: Was this Apperson Ridge, or are they two different places?

Pesonen: Pleasanton. No, Apperson Ridge was the gravel quarry.

Pleasanton Ridge is the big ridge that runs from Hayward down to
Pleasanton. A beautiful area. Big. There was a lot of
controversy because the ranchers up there wanted to develop it.

Lage: And was Bowers on the side of developing it, or--?

Pesonen: No, Bowers was on the side of making it a park, but he was

developing around the edges of it. His scheme, I think, was it
would make his other developments more attractive if he had a big
park right next to them.

Lage: But he seemed personally interested?

Pesonen: I thought he was personally interested. He was a very strange
guy, and he insisted on meeting with me once a week down in
Pleasanton. We would go out and have breakfast and he'd have an
agenda of things to talk about, some of them very detailed
internal administration. I didn't trust Bowers, but Bowers and
Kessel hated each other; so as long as Kessel wanted to vote
against me, Bowers was going to vote for me.

Lage: Tremendous intrigue!
Pesonen: Yes.

269

Lage : It doesn't seem like the way these elected boards should work.

Pesonen: There is enormous intrigue in those things. The trading off of
small ego strokes.

Lage: I keep interrupting you.
Pesonen: Oh, that's fine.

It was very dif ficult--it became a very difficult job. And
I began to feel insecure that I didn't have a unanimous board,
and I couldn't figure out how to satisfy them. They just seemed
to want to be unhappy. They're still unhappy. I'm told that
poor Pat 0' Brian who came after me is in the same situation,
except he was able, in the wake of my resignation, to negotiate a
contract which costs them an arm and a leg if they fire him. It
would cost them a lot of money to fire him, and that's a
deterrent. I didn't have a contract. They had said, "Oh, you
don't need a contract." I'll know better next time.

So there was this problem with Karen Frick. We needed a
staff person who could--Bob Connelly left. Bob Connelly saw,
sooner than I did, that this was a hopeless situation. He went
right back to the legislature. His words were, "It's a lot
easier to work with eighty crazies than seven."

Lage: So he saw what you were up against?

Pesonen: He saw what I was up against, and he saw no future for himself
there. He got offered a very good position by Willie Brown, as
staff to the Assembly Rules Committee; it was a very good
position and he was very good at it. And still he's essentially
running the Rules Committee for the assembly, trying to keep
Willie Brown out of trouble. Willie's a challenge, too.
[laughter]

But Bob saw that there wasn't any way he could keep me out
of trouble. Knowing me as well as he does, I think, he realized
that I was doomed, and he would go down with me. I think he made
a smart choice, a wise decision.

A Fatal Mistake and More Intrigue

Pesonen: Anyway, in the wake of Bob's not being there, we needed somebody
to handle this legislative program in Sacramento. Janet Cobb,
whom I had hired to run public relations and who's still there

270

and who is just a dynamite woman, had a friend whom she had
worked with before, Karen Frick, who had been on the staff at
Senator Montoya's office and had done some political consulting
around the Bay Area. She seemed to have the right credentials.
We interviewed three or four people, but we hired her. Her
office was right next to mine in this little executive suite up
on the hill.

Well, that was in the fall of '85, I guess, around December.
I started taking Karen to some of these gatherings that I go to,
the Association of Bay Area Governments, and other things, to
introduce her to people. One night we were at a Christmas party,
it got a little romantic. I thought she was interested, and I
was interested, and we dated for a while. The dating didn't go
very far.

That was a fatal mistake, to even get involved at all,
because it turned out that Karen was also dating Lynn Bowers. I
began to hear rumors of that, and I thought, "This was a very
stupid thing to do." So I broke it off, probably in January.
There was never any sex in it. I told my friend Paul Halvonik
about it one time, and he said, "You went through all this
trouble and you never got laid?" [laughter] We may cut that one
out of the transcript. It just didn't go very far, but it was
public. We showed up with each other at these gatherings.

Lage: Was the Lynn Bowers thing public, too?

Pesonen: That became public, shortly afterwards. Bowers was married, and
he was showing up at social gatherings with Karen Frick on his
arm.

Well, what happened then was the staff, who feared Bowers-
Bowers was one of the most brutal to staff of anybody on that
board, and he could be really vicious, and he could also be
devious in trying to get what he wanted through manipulation of
staff. Nobody trusted Bowers. Here was my right-hand staff
person showing up at closed staff meetings where we talked about
how we were going to present something to the board, and suddenly
nobody would talk because they began to feel that it was getting
back to Bowers through pillow talk through Karen. It became an
almost impossible situation. It was very hard to function around
there when you had what everybody perceived as a spy right in the
general manager's office; a spy to the most hated and despised
and feared member of the board.

II

Lage: That would seem to be a conflict of interest on her part.

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Pesonen: Well, it's not a legal conflict of interest. You know,

government can't say what people's personal lives are supposed to

be like, as long as they are not in violation of some law, and

there was no law that governed this.

And Karen started to kind of flout her connection with
Bowers. I just didn't know what to do. I mean, there wasn't
anything I could do. I was unable to do my job; it was eroding
my fragile support on the board already. Finally, Janet and I
talked about it. Janet was very close to Karen. Janet thought
it was a crazy situation and impossible and we had to find some
way out of it. Janet took Karen aside — this was four or five
months after we had been dating—and persuaded her that it wasn't
in her interests to stay on in this circumstance and that she
should resign. She agreed. Janet called me full of exuberance
and excitation at home that night, "Karen has agreed to leave."

Well, I felt this huge load off my shoulders. At 5:30 the
next morning, I get a call from Lynn Bowers. He said, "I want to
see you this morning, right now," and he named a place down in
Hayward, some little restaurant. I showed up there and Bowers
walked in. He walked over and sat down at the table and he said,
"I'm going to get you." He said, "Karen can't leave." He
confirmed that he needed Karen to stay in that position of
information--

Lage: Oh, I see. He confirmed that he saw her as a source of
information.

Pesonen: Oh, absolutely. And he was furious that Janet, working on my

behalf, had persuaded Karen to resign. And so she had reversed
her position. He told me, "She's not going to resign." Well,,
she hadn't told us that, but she must have told him that that
night. He said, "You've just lost your fourth vote." He was
going to join with Kessel and Kay Peterson and Mary Jefferds.

I said, "Let's go for a walk." We went over to Lake Chabot
Park and walked around. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and
people were out fishing and riding their bikes and I said, "This
is what I'm here for. I don't know what you're here for, but it
appears that you've got some other interests, and I'll fight you.
I may lose it, but I'm not going to go back and embrace Karen as
part of the staff. It would be impossible to do the job."

So I went back to the office, and there was no Karen Frick
around. Of course, I told Janet and a couple of other confidants
what had happened and Karen showed up about one o'clock in the
afternoon, drunk. Not drunk, but she had been drinking, I could
tell; you could smell it. And distraught. So I called her in

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the office, and I said, "This is totally untenable. It's not
going to work. You're fired." This was against the advice of
Ellen Maldonado, who was our legal staff, and I should have
listened to her, but I was so upset at what Bowers had said that
morning. He had sort of thrown this gauntlet down, and my
reaction was not thought out.

Lage: Now, why was it against the advice of your legal--?

Pesonen: Well, she said, "You've got a basis to fire her, but you've got
to make a record." I hadn't made a record that would stand up.
This had all been talk and the grist of water cooler breaks. I
hadn't sat down and formally, the way you have to do, and--

Lage: Provide warnings?

Pesonen: Provide warnings, opportunities for correction. Nothing that I
had told her either had to do with her performance. Her
performance was falling off, and it could have been documented,
but it wasn't documented. So--. Well, the reason I fired her
was that I knew she wasn't doing her job; she was an
embarrassment to me and my emotional reaction was: Bowers can't
do this to me.

About a month or two later, Ellen Maldonado walked into my
office with bad news. Karen had gotten a lawyer, a very good
lawyer in San Francisco, who had written a letter, a confidential
letter, threatening to bring charges before the State Fair
Employment Practices Commission alleging that she had been
wrongfully fired in retaliation for spurning my sexual advances
and that he would keep it confidential and he wouldn't file suit
if we reached a quick settlement.

Lage: Sounds suspiciously like blackmail.

Pesonen: Yes. Well, but it's legal. So I immediately called the board,

or notified the board, anyway, and got a lawyer for the board. I
went and told the lawyer the whole story with Ellen along.

Lage: What a difficult situation, with a board member involved.

Pesonen: Bowers was still sleeping with Karen. Everybody knew it by this
time. He practically admitted it. I think he was about ready to
say he was going to move out of his house and leave his wife
behind and go someplace with Karen. Or maybe by this time they
had gotten an apartment. I don't remember. It was notorious,
anyway .

273

I told the whole story to this lawyer, who was a very good
lawyer who Guy Saperstein referred me to. And he said, "What a
mess." [laughter] "What a mess." And it certainly was. I
can't claim that I'm not responsible for it having been such a
mess.

Well, the matter dragged out and the negotiations dragged
out on the settlement, and at first this guy demanded half a
million dollars to keep her mouth shut and go away. She wasn't
interested in reinstatement. She just wanted money. They
finally settled, I think, for a very nominal sum—thirty thousand
dollars, I think, which is nothing in these days- -but the
political ramifications were enormous. The board was very
uneasy, very nervous, as this story emerged.

Well, somebody tipped off a reporter on the Tribune and on
the Hayward Daily Review and they started calling and saying
"What's going on?" "Well, it's all confidential," we'd say.
Well, nothing hooks the appetite of a reporter more than to say
that there's a scandal brewing someplace and it's confidential.
So this reporter, Julie — I've forgotten her last name now--on the
Hayward Daily Review, she was a good investigative reporter. She
began to sniff out bits and pieces here and there, and the story
began to leak, as it inevitably would.

I remember one meeting before the board when the board was
to approve the settlement, and it was a closed session, and
Bowers was there. The lawyer we'd hired from Crosby, Heafey,
Roach, and May was also there, and Bowers stood up and said, "I
object to this meeting proceeding while we have this sex maniac
present." I said, "Well, he's my lawyer, too, but I'll tell you
what. If it makes your job easier, I'll go out and walk around
the block while you discuss your options with our lawyer, and
I'll come back."

I did, and Bowers by that time, was quiet, and the board
accepted the proposal that had been negotiated by our lawyer
which was forty thousand dollars and total confidentiality and a
provision that we would not say anything derogatory about Karen
if we got a call from a future employer reference.

That was satisfactory, but they didn't stay quiet and more
and more inquiries came along. Finally, the Hayward Daily Review
sued or threatened to sue, to open up the file. Ellen thought
they might very well win because the park district was a public
agency, so we decided to just open up the whole file. We did so
at an open board meeting, and I made a little speech about how
it's all behind us, and I made some mistakes, but let's get on

274

with running the park district, and Bowers resigned. Bowers
resigned right after that meeting, I think.

Lage: Did that come out in the Hayward Daily Review!

Pesonen: The newspapers had hinted at the relationship between Karen Frick
and Lynn Bowers. I don't think they ever came out completely and
said it. But they hinted that they were close acquaintances, it
was--what is the word I'm thinking of, "close friends."

Lage: Discreet language?

Pesonen: Euphemism. These were some standard euphemisms for

relationships, it seems. They're married now, Bowers and Karen
Frick. So I am told, anyway. I don't have a lot to do with
them.

Lage: So he resigned?

Pesonen: He resigned. He said he'd accomplished everything he wanted to

accomplish. There was no reason for him to stay on the board any
longer. Which nobody believed; at least I didn't believe it. So
it was a very unpleasant time, but I thought, "Well, now we've
got it behind us, we've sort of cleared the air. Let's get on
with it."

Leaving the Park District Position

Pesonen: Right at that time, Guy Saperstein called up and said, "I've got
this big sex-discrimination lawsuit that I need somebody to
manage; would you be interested?" [laughter] It turned out to
be the biggest sex-discrimination case in the history of the
Civil Rights Act. I thought, "My reputation is really in
trouble, and it's in trouble partly from my own doing. I'm not
free of responsibility for that. I think I got trapped by some
other people, but I walked into the trap. This is a great
opportunity; it's a lot more money, it's an opportunity to--at
least superf icially--redress the sense that I'm kind of a sex
ogre, and I'm free of this board."

Lage: Do you think they would have put it behind them if you hadn't
left at that time?

Pesonen: I don't know if they would have or not. There was talk that

maybe I should resign. It hadn't come to anything, but it was —

275

Lage: Now there were only six members on the board.

Pesonen: But there was an appointment made by the board to fill Bowers'
seat. That was Joycelyn Combs from Pleasanton. I talked to
Joycelyn, and she knew what had happened, and she knew about the
Bowers /Frick thing. She would have been a support vote. But the
taint was there, and the echo was there; the history was there.

Lage: And you had the other problems that preceded it.

Pesonen: And I had the other problems. I wasn't happy at the park

district. I had never been happy after about the first year. 1
always felt that I was being dangled a little bit by that board
and being deliberately kept insecure so that I would respond to
their personal needs. They all had little political agendas,
where they wanted the staff to do something special for a
constituent that would take away from some other program. I was
trying to balance these needs among these board members.

Lage: So it wasn't the setup that an outsider might envision, where the
board sets policy and oversees the general manager, who then has
control over the organization.

Pesonen: It is nothing like that. It still isn't like that.

Lage: So each one has their own little agenda and interferes at various
levels?

Pesonen: Have you ever been to one of those board meetings?
Lage: No.

Pesonen: Go to one of the board meetings sometime. It is an

embarrassment. It is an embarrassment the way they talk to each
other; it is an embarrassment the way they insult each other, the
way they insult their staff--

•Lage: Did that include you, the insulting?

Pesonen: It included everybody. Jerry Kent was the only one who had a way
somehow of smoothing things over.

Lage: Did he make special approaches to the board?

Pesonen: Oh yes. He is capable of doing that, but he does it without

leaving too many fingerprints. He's very skilled at that. He
should be the general manager.

Lage:

Why has he not been general manager?

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Pesonen: He didn't want it. He was invited to apply when I got appointed.
He knew what it was like. He knows he's insulated in the
assistant general manager position from absorbing all of the
abuse. He's cushioned from it. A smart decision on his part.
Not a high visibility position, he's not the point person on whom
the board focuses their dismay.

So I started negotiating an agreement with Guy to come over
to his firm and manage the Kraszewski v. State Farm case, which
was only a gleam in everybody's eye at that time. It was a big
consent decree approved by the district court. It didn't even
have an office, it didn't have a staff, it didn't have a budget,
it didn't have anything. And we were going after a couple of
hundred million dollars from State Farm.

Lage: Before we get into that, it seems to me there's more on the East
Bay parks besides your relationship with the board. I mean, some
of the things that happened in the parks.

Pesonen: Yes, well, there were some good things that happened.
Lage: Can we go a little bit more into that?

Pesonen: Substantively? Yes. I think the district got much more

professional in the way it managed its land and dealt with the
grazing issue, with the water quality issue, with--. And the
district continued to be aggressive with land acquisition, and it
made, I think, by and large, wise choices.

Conflicting Views of the District's Mission

Lage: Was there a tension between whether to spend the money on
acquisition or on management?

Pesonen: Yes, very much so.

Lage: Was that something the board was divided on?

Pesonen: That was one of the big fights on the board all of the time. My
overall slant, in thirty words or less, is that that board is not
subject to very much public attention. It holds its meetings at
remote locations in the middle of the day, so the only people who
really see what goes on in those board meetings — and even the
press doesn't show up most of the time- -is a very small clique of
extreme open space environmentalists. Afton Crooks is one of
those, and there are a number of other people, and they all know

277

Lage:

each other. They don't want any money spent on anything but land
acquisition.

There are parks which get a lot of public use. Tilden is an
exception to the park district. Tilden is what a lot of Berkeley
people think of as the East Bay Regional Park District, but it's
an aberration.

In the amount of use it gets and the amount of development it
has?

Pesonen: It was Mott's idea, and it's very highly developed. From the

beginning, even before Mott, with a golf course and a merry-go-
round and the swimming lakes and--. Tilden is where all of the
high-visibility activity, where you take children and families go
to picnic, is focused. Most of the park district is open space.
Developers are buying up open space and building houses, and it's
a race between the park district and the developers for the park
district to get out in front and buy it while it's cheap.

Hulet Hornbeck, who ran the land department for years and
years under Trudeau, was the architect of a lot of that
acquisition.

Lage: And that was the thrust — acquisition?

Pesonen: He left at the same time Trudeau did; he retired. He was

replaced by his young assistant, Bob Doyle, who attempted to
carry on Hulet ' s approach. Doyle was very popular with the
board; his land acquisition was popular. But, you know, you had
playgrounds falling apart and trails to build. So I was looking
for a different balance, with some development in parks.

There were a couple of board members, Kay Peterson having
been probably the most vocal, against any tot lots, for example,
a place where mothers could go and sit and read and knit, or
fathers, for that matter, and have their kids play on a little
play structure. They hated little play structures. They didn't
want them any place. So if we put them in the budget, they'd
take them out or there was a move to take them out.

Lage: So they would review a plan that you might have for an individual
park and object to certain--

Pesonen: They would object to those kinds of things; they'd object to--.

Each budget cycle we'd go through this. I just didn't think that
was a good balance. We had a lot of people coming to parks with
no place go: there were no picnic tables.

278

I think there was a certain amount of racism in it, too, or
cultural bias, anyway. Because, you go to parks like Garin
[Regional] Park down near Hayward on a sunny Sunday afternoon,
and the place would be jammed with low- income people, a lot of
Hispanics, a lot of black people, and no place to have a picnic.
You knew these people lived in daily living circumstances which
probably weren't very comfortable—little apartments with no open
space, nothing outdoors except a concrete ramp where you park the
cars and the kids play stick ball.

My philosophy was that the more you could get people into
parks --whether it's true or not there's no way to prove it — the
more you could get people released to get out into open space,
into parks, and have enough room, they'd be better citizens.
That's an old notion in the United States. It goes back to
Jefferson. Nobody knows whether it's true or not, but I believed
it anyway.

So I wanted facilities. These were not people who put on an
Audubon Society backpack and went off into the remote parts of
the park; it just wasn't their lifestyle. It would be nice if
they did, but they weren't going to do it. They were tied down
with industrial, blue-collar jobs all week and three or four kids
running around, and they just wanted to get out and away and play
their radios and drink some beer and cook some hot dogs and ribs
or—

Lage: And have their tot structures?

Pesonen: --and have their tot structure and just get some release. The

board was very much opposed to that. So I thought it was a kind
of elitist position on the part of the board members.

On the other hand, you did need to buy land while it was
cheap, so I wasn't opposed to land acquisition, I was all for it,
focused on various parks. But what often happened is that
somebody who was close to one of the board members, who already
lived in a nice place on the edge of a piece of open space, found
out that they were going to lose their free open space and would
put pressure on the board to buy that land when it wasn't part of
any plan for development of the park. In effect, they were
protecting some already privileged person or group of people.

Those things would come along, and you never knew when one
of those requests would walk in the door and be turned into a
political push by the board, with accusations that we were trying
to sell out to the developers by not buying it immediately. They
were always accusing the staff of bad faith. It was just a
constant problem.

279

Harlan was one of the worst. He had some friends up in the
hills who wanted the horse ranch up there near the entrance where
you go over the hill on Redwood Road, a very expensive piece of
property. It didn't really fit in the park at all. Harlan would
come up with these notions that this was the gateway to the park
lands, and we should buy it. He had a friend who had a building
up there; he wanted the park district to buy the building and
find some use for it.

Lage: And these didn't fit logically geographically with the park?

Pesonen: Many of them were isolated from the park. But they were doing a
favor for somebody. They were very expensive. So some of the
land acquisition was not wise. Some of it was good, very sound.
And land is expensive, and I was all for acquiring as much land
as possible in Pleasanton Ridge, for example, or along the
shoreline, or wetlands.

The park district had a general plan for that, a master
plan. Many of these acquisitions were outside the master plan.
The board would go through elaborate public hearings, adopt a
master plan, and then just completely ignore it.

Lage: Completely ignore it and pick up little pieces of property?
Pesonen: Pick up little bits and pieces here and there.

Lage: You would almost have to go out and develop your own
constituency, it seems, to challenge them.

Pesonen: Well, that was the problem. It was a very elitist, small

constituency that was, in effect, running the political agenda,
for the board. It offended me; it offended my sense of what the
park district was all about. You can't have a general manager
who is offended by the policies of his board. I suppose I could
have gone out and tried, sub rosa to generate some constituency,
and that's what Mott was good at.

Lage: I can't imagine his putting up with that from his board too well.
But maybe it didn't happen when--

Pesonen: No. But times were different, too. You know, Mott's board were
businessmen who--. You know, like [Paul] Harberts, who ran the
sporting goods store in Berkeley and people like that that come
to a board meeting, and they nod their heads. Like corporate
boards. Corporate boards don't tell management what to do; they
collect their stipend, and they go back and run their own
businesses .

280

But Harlan didn't have a job; Mary Jefferds didn't have a
job; Kay Peterson didn't have a job; Lynn Bowers didn't have a
job that anybody could figure out--he had some kind of a
business. So you had four board members who essentially spent
full time messing around with the district. The more tractable
members of the board, like Jim Duncan and Ted Radke, did have
full-time jobs, and they couldn't spend the time that Harlan and
Mary and Kay Peterson, for example, could do.

Those people were in that building all of the time, sneaking
up and down the hall, visiting with some top staff person,
shutting the door, telling them what to do. Then the staff would
come back and report to me and say, "What do I do? I've got
directions from you to do one thing, and now they are telling me
that I should do something else." It would be one board member,
one out of seven, but it would be a board member who could maybe
swing a couple more votes at the next board meeting.

Lage: Very untenable.

Negotiating the Acquisition of Ferry Point in Martinez

Lage: What about the Ferry Point acquisition? That's mentioned as one
of your accomplishments.

Pesonen: Well, Ferry Point I look upon as one of my triumphs. The park
district and the city of Martinez jointly operate a park in
Martinez, which is on the other side of the Southern Pacific
Railroad tracks from the main town. It's a very nice park with a
marina and lots of open space, and it's very popular.

But the Southern Pacific trains stop right at the Martinez
station, and they block the street that gets to the park.
There ' s a switching yard down the line a little ways towards
Crockett, and a lot of switching goes back and forth with cars
that are serving those refineries around the bay. So it has been
a constant irritant to Martinez that the railroad was cutting it
off from its waterfront.

In 1983 or '84, the two railroads, Southern Pacific and
Santa Fe Railway were purchased by one company. It became the
Santa Fe Pacific Railway. The plan in that merger was that the
two railroads would merge their operations. Well, both lines run
through Martinez: the Santa Fe line inland along Highway 4, the
Southern Pacific lines historically right along the bay. The
plan further called for consolidating all rail traffic on the

281

Southern Pacific line and abandoning the Santa Fe line. The
inference which you expect from that is there would be a lot more
traffic along the bay—rail traffic—less access to the bay, and
more interference with Martinez's use of the park.

So the park district joined with Martinez in intervening in
the Interstate Commerce Commission proceedings which were
required to approve the merger, and that kind of languished. We
got a lawyer in Washington who didn't do much. So I started
looking at this case — something about it came across my desk— and
I thought, "You know, there's some leverage here to get something
out of these railways." So I got the park district and Martinez
to join together and hire a firm in San Francisco to file a
petition with the ICC asserting that the environmental review of
this merger was inadequate under federal law.

That started to work, started to get their attention. And I
pushed that, I got personally involved in that to some extent. I
realized that it had to be, to some extent, a political campaign.
I organized all of the mayors of the cities along the bay from
Richmond all the way around to Martinez--! didn't have to work on
Martinez because their city manager was with us, a very effective
city manager, Jack Garner. We started getting some press
attention, that there was going to be a Berlin Wall of freight
cars cutting people off from the bay and slogans like that, and
getting lots of coverage and then collecting the clippings and
sending them off to the ICC. And getting the budget to pay these
lawyers to file a very serious petition that the environmental
review was inadequate.

I went back to Washington and met with the environmental
staff for the ICC. They were very helpful to us because, under
the Reagan administration, their budget had been cut and they
felt cast adrift and abandoned and unlistened-to by the
commission itself. So they were happy to help us because it
enhanced their own role within the agency. We had a very fine
lobbyist in Washington named Dave Wyman who helped me with this.

I think I made at least two trips to Washington, one with
Peter Langley— he' s running for mayor of Martinez now— he and I
went together.

I*

Pesonen: I took a personal interest in this because I saw that there was a
chance to get, in effect, mitigation— an enormous mitigation— for
access to the bay.

282

We finally put together meetings with the top management of
Santa Fe and Southern Pacific, and we made an agreement that in
exchange for the park district withdrawing its opposition in the
ICC, the railroad would grant seven easements for pedestrian
bridges across the rail line to the bay, would sell Ferry Point
to the park district at fair market value and would give it an
option, and would make concessions in their operations in
Martinez that were very favorable to the city, including
transferring some property to the city. It was a good deal.

Lage: You didn't get them to move into the inland tracks?

Pesonen: Practically, that didn't make sense. There was a tunnel on that
that wouldn't accommodate the double-decker container trains that
they planned to use the line for. There were some practical
reasons why the inland track was the one that should be
abandoned. We didn't have the leverage to force that anyway; we
couldn't have persuaded the commission to compel that.

But we could, possibly, persuade the commission to give us
some environmental mitigation, and we always had the threat of
going to federal court and holding the whole thing up, which was
our real leverage because this was a junk-bond-financed
transaction where there were enormous interest, carrying charges,
going on all the time, and if we hold the thing up for a month it
costs them fifty million bucks in interest. They were willing to
buy you off early for a lot. It was a very useful device. It
can be used for bad purposes, and it can be used for good ones.
We happened to be using it for good ones, in my opinion.

That deal was conditioned on the ICC approving the merger,
and to everybody's shock and astonishment, the commission turned
down the petition to merge, and so we were back to square one.
The commission further ordered Santa Fe Pacific to sell one of
the railroads to somebody else. That went on for about a year
and Santa Fe finally decided to sell the Southern Pacific Railway
to Denver and Rio Grande, which is about one-tenth the size, and
SP is now owned by multi-billionaire Phillip Anschults in Denver,
who owned the Denver and Rio Grande.

So we went to Anschults and went back to Washington and
talked to his lawyer and talked with the Santa Fe Pacific people
in Chicago, and we put together another deal.

Lage: But you didn't have the leverage of holding — ?

Pesonen: We had the same leverage because the purchasing railroad was

outside the company we had been dealing with, but Santa Fe still
needed ICC approval for this sale. So we resurrected our threat,

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Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

and this time the connection was a little more remote. Denver
and Rio Grande and Southern Pacific had to persuade Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway to sell us Ferry Point because that
was owned by the Santa Fe Railway. And Santa Fe wasn't being
sold, and it wasn't merging, but it was part of the larger
company that had a financial interest in getting rid of Southern
Pacific.

So, in the interest of furthering their need to divest
Southern Pacific at a favorable price, we were able to put
pressure on Santa Fe to give us a good deal on Ferry Point.

When I left the park district, I had a fairly sizeable
severance package, and one of the things I insisted on was that I
stay on as a consultant to the park district and get paid for it,
to complete the deal at Ferry Point. I worked on that for the
last four years.

Oh, it's still ongoing?

We closed the deal in December of 1991. The park district now
owns that Ferry Point land.

And did you get the other mitigations, the access?

We got the other mitigations, too, including in the city of
Martinez and the railroad crossings. They didn't build the
bridges, but we have the easements.

So the park district has to build the bridges.

The park district has to build the bridges if they ever want it.
So far the economy has been so bad there hasn't been any increase
in rail traffic on that line.

But that's a good story,
accepted?

Now, was that one that was universally

Lage:

That was universally accepted. I went up to the park district
back in December when the board approved the purchase, and
everybody was laudatory. I was asked to give a little talk to
the board; we all went out and had our picture taken together.
Mary Jefferds is gone by now, Kay Peterson is gone, Lynn Bowers
is gone, but Harlan was still there. Harlan and I were in the
same photograph that was published in the Log, the park district
monthly newsletter. Harlan was very complimentary.

Well, that's nice, to have some good feeling after a few years.
Let's stop here.

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X LAND ACQUISITION AND PARK PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT AT EBRPD
[Interview 8: May 28, 1992] II

Financing Acquisitions with State Grants and Revenue Bonds

Lage:

We had a few more topics to cover on the East Bay Regional Parks.

Pesonen: Yes, there were a number of issues we didn't talk about last
time.

The issue of budget and finance that comes with all public
agencies is always foremost. I mean, when I was at the
Department of Forestry, we were in the budget cycle year-round.
To some extent, the East Bay Regional Parks District was the same
way. The park district had an annual budget approved each
December for the next fiscal year (which was the calendar year) .
The district was fairly well endowed and it had--it was a
beneficiary of some property tax legislation that had been passed
right after Prop. 13, and I confess I don't remember the details
of it, but I remember that the district was fairly well-off
financially.

Lage: After Prop. 13 they made some kind of corrective legislation that
allowed them to tax--?

Pesonen: Yes. But given the appetite of the board for land acquisition
and the pressures on land in the East Bay, that wasn't enough.
The district was very successful at acquiring land with grants
from the Department of Parks and Recreation out of state park
bond money. Most of the state park bond issues which had passed
in prior years authorized a portion of those bond proceeds — in
fact mandated that a portion of those bond proceeds—be used for
regional and local parks. So they were earmarked for that.

Lage: Was there a lot of competition, then, for that money?

285

Pesonen: There was some competition, but the East Bay Regional Parks

District was the most aggressive, the most well organized, the
most politically-connected in Sacramento, and it got the lion's
share of those monies. Probably its biggest competitor was the
Santa Monica Mountains Trust, because the people who ran that
organization also had a lot of political influence. It was not a
regional park district, but it was an open space organization.

Lage: Was this related at all to Republican/Democrat party politics and
influence?

Pesonen: No, it was regional. It crossed party lines, pretty much. Even
a very, very dyed-in-the-wool reactionary conservative like Bill
Baker from Danville, who was far to the right on every issue, was
helpful to the park district. And then the park district had in
its area a lot of people who had been in the legislature. There
was [Assemblyman John] Jack Knox, who had been speaker at one
point, lived in Point Richmond, very helpful to the park district
even after he left the legislature. Senator Nejedly, John
Nejedly, was always willing to help. The district had a
lobbyist.

Lage: Was this done through the legislature or through the parks
department?

Pesonen: Sometimes it took legislation to get some of this bond money

transferred over to the park district, sometimes it was earmarked
from the terms of the state park bond measures. There were
various ways to do it, and there was a long history of experience
with that. The district had a full-time development officer
whose job, in part, was keeping track of all of those bond
monies.

Well, it still wasn't enough. So the result was that much
of the tension on the board that I confronted was what you'd
expect in any public agency where the elected officials have to
fight over a dwindling pie with increasing demands. They were
constantly jockeying back and forth. It was very hard to plan
acquisitions in an orderly way. Even though the district was
well endowed, was well-off financially compared to other park
agencies, it wasn't well-off compared to its own appetite, the
appetite of its own board.

Lynn Bowers, who was probably the most vocal voice on the
board for the Pleasanton Ridge acquisition, which would be very
expensive, kept talking about a districtwide bond issue. I was
skeptical that we could get the two-thirds vote in Contra Costa
County. It had to be across the board in both counties, and you
needed 66 2/3 percent, and that was very hard to get.

286

Lage: Did you need that in each county or — ?

Pesonen: No, in the district—within the district — which encompassed

virtually all of both counties except a couple of eastern parts
of Contra Costa and one school district out there and a school
district in southeastern Alameda County, none of which were
heavily populated. So basically the whole population of both
counties was in the district.

So I called a big meeting, I think it was in the spring of
1987, and brought in some experts: a lawyer, Steve Meyer, from
the firm Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Robertson, and Falk in
San Francisco, who was an expert on local government financing.
It was an all-day session with the board. We made presentations
on ways in which the district could raise more money.

The district had never, to my knowledge, since its founding
in 1936, I think, issued any revenue bonds. There was discussion
of use of these various devices that local governments frequently
use: Mello-Roos bonds; certificates of participation, which is a
way of selling buildings and leasing them back--

Lage: Like Oakland has done with the Oakland Museum?

Pesonen: Yes, Oakland has done a lot of that. It didn't work very well in
Oakland's case. [laughter] You have to have a revenue-producing
structure to make it work, and a public building like a city hall
is a revenue-producing structure in a way, in that the city pays
its rent.

I began to favor revenue bonds, and we put together a bond
issue which, I think, was $16 million, which was a lot of money.
I mean, you could buy quite a bit of land. And it made up the
deficit between the appetite of the board for immediate
acquisition and what was available, at least in the short run.

Lage: Now, can this be done without an election, these revenue bonds?

Pesonen: Yes. Revenue bonds can be issued without an election. That's
why we went that route.

Lage: Now, the revenue bond, then, is paid off on what basis?

Pesonen: It's paid off from the district's regular tax revenue, but it
doesn't increase the tax base of the taxpayers.

Lage:

But doesn't it obligate the taxpayers down the line?

287

Pesonen: Yes, it obligates them down the line, but it doesn't increase
their taxes. The district had a sufficient cash flow and a
sufficiently sound tax base that the underwriters and the bond
rating companies gave it a really high rating.

The idea was to buy the land early, when the price was still
lower, and save the district money in the long run by not having
to buy more expensive land when development pressures would push
the price up. It seemed like a modest amount. It was still an
enormous struggle to get it through the board. There was a lot
of history in the district of not going into debt for land
acquisition; a pay-as-you-go history.

Dick Trudeau had very much favored the pay-as-you-go history
and he had successfully squirrelled away, I suppose, a reserve
fund, a very large reserve fund. The district was totally
solvent.

Lage: So you had a good financial basis.

Pesonen: But that fund was being depleted pretty fast by the land
acquisition needs that the board saw.

Lage: Did Trudeau keep a ceiling on those land acquisition needs? Was
he able to keep the board in hand better? Keep their desires in
leash?

Pesonen: I wasn't there then. I'm not a firsthand observer of that. I

heard later that part of the reason he left (I'm told it was not
entirely voluntarily although he was retirement age) was that he
wasn't aggressive enough about land acquisition. But he left the
district, when I took over, in very sound financial condition
with a substantial reserve. What Trudeau had seen happen and was
in fact what was happening while I was there was that reserve, if
we responded to the board's demands, wasn't going to last very
long.

The board was getting divided by its geographic ambitions.
Harlan Kessel would say, "We've got to spend more money in my
ward," and Ted Radke would say, "Well, we spent enough in your
ward. We ought to spend some in mine," and that sort of thing
was going on. There wasn't enough to spend, enough to satisfy
them in both their wards- -or in all seven wards that made up the
board.

So we did get the bonds issued, and that was a breather; it
was only a breather.

Lage: And what was purchased with those?

288

Pesonen: Well, you know I don't remember specifically, but that went into
a fund and then each year the board would have a land session in
which there was this huge laundry list of potential purchases,
and the board would set priorities with some criteria. The staff
would make recommendations and by and large the board went along
with them because it was our job to know roughly where the board
would end up. They tinkered with it—with the priorities--to
some extent, but by and large it came out the way the staff
recommended it.

It was a big event each year, the land session. Since it
was concerned with purchasing property, under the Brown Act it
could be a closed session, so the public was not invited to
those; they were not permitted into those meetings.

Lage: So the public didn't know the priorities?

Pesonen: Yes. And there were some good reasons for it. If a developer
out there knew that the board had put a very high priority on
purchasing his property, it would give him leverage in
negotiations over the price.

That land session was one of the big events with the board
each year, and the board came to it like jackals coming to the
kill. This was what they really loved, was buying land, and they
loved that session. It was a real high for them. It gave
reality to these acquisitions.

Lage: Since it was a closed session, it sounds as if the public

pressure aspect is removed a bit. Or did that come in in some
other way?

Pesonen: Public pressure on that board never depended on attendance at

these board meetings. That was outside the formal proceedings in
which business was conducted. So those board members came into
those land sessions knowing what their constituents wanted, and
what they wanted, and what they wanted to be able to tell their
constituents they'd gotten. It didn't matter whether it was a
closed session or not, the pressures were still there.

That was the first major bond issuance by the district since
it had been founded, and it was a lot of work getting it
approved; getting the board persuaded to do it and then
developing the kind of information that the bond rating agencies
wanted.

289

The Regional Park District and the Oakland Zoo

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Part of the pressure that was on the district was from the
Oakland Zoo. The Oakland Zoo had fallen into poor condition. In
fact, it had been decertified--! don't know the exact
terminology, but the American Zoological Society or whatever
organization it is that reviews zoos and certifies them as good
or bad, had threatened to remove the approval of the Oakland Zoo
because the cages or the animal compounds were in poor condition,
they were old-fashioned, they were unhealthy. The zoo society
had hired Joel Parrott when the former chief director had
retired. Parrott had been the veterinarian there. He was a very
dynamic person. He loved the animals, and he was very aggressive
about going out and raising money for the zoo, to rebuild it.
He's come a long way. He's done a fine job with that zoo.

Well, Kathy Neal, who was Elihu Harris's wife, was on the
Oakland Zoo board. I'm not sure that's the exact title of the
organization, but it's a quasi-public body.

Now, Mott was connected with that, too, wasn't he?
resigned by this time?

Or had he

He had resigned by this time. The zoo had fallen into poor shape
under Mott's tenure, but I don't know what the reasons were. He
may not have had much choice given the finances that he faced.

So [Assemblyman, now Oakland Mayor] Elihu Harris began to
look at the bounty enjoyed by the park district as a place to
subsidize the zoo. That caused consternation on the board.

Was all of the board opposed to that?

Pretty much. Mary Jefferds was probably the most strongly
opposed to it. Harlan Kessel had problems with it because it was
Oakland, and that's in his ward. He counted on Elihu Harris for
support, and so he was ambivalent. He was looking for some way
out, to compromise his way out of that.

That threat was renewed each year. Finally, I don't
remember all of the details, but we peeled some money off --not a
whole lot--for the zoo one year, I think in '86. But the problem
didn't go away. It was going to come back the next budget year
and the next budget year. So that was a constant bur under my
saddle; it was an irritant. I wasn't particularly sympathetic to
the zoo, either. I didn't think that it was appropriate for the
park district money to go to that when the demands for open space
were so great. But I could have been wrong.

290

Lage: Was that something you had to take an active role in, working
with--?

Pesonen: I had to mediate between the board. I had to find some

politically acceptable way to solve that problem that the board
would accept. That was always my goal in that area. 1 didn't
see my goal as helping the zoo out any more than necessary.
While I had great admiration for Joel Parrott and what he was
doing, my perception of what parks were about didn't include the
zoo. But my value judgments were not that important. It was the
politics that were more important, and maybe my value judgments
weren't thought through very well.

1 believed in open space. I wanted to get people into open
space, not into zoos; not to see caged animals in an artificial
environment. There is certainly a value to that, but it just
wasn't what I thought parks were about. I'm sure there are many
views on that that can be well supported by good arguments, but
that was my bias, anyway.

Ardenwood Regional Park

Lage: What was your involvement with Ardenwood Park in Fremont?

Pesonen: The Ardenwood acquisition and development had happened before I
came to the park district, and there was an Ardenwood advisory
committee set up, I think as part of a compromise out of some
controversy growing out of the establishment of Ardenwood
[encompassing an historic house and small working historic
farm].1

Lage: Is that unusual, for the particular park to have an advisory
committee?

Pesonen: That was unusual. I think Ardenwood was the only one that did.
Ardenwood was resented, to some extent, because it was very
expensive. It was expensive to operate. It was an attempt to
recreate an old farm. You needed all of the machinery, and you
had aesthetics to maintain; there were problems with the
eucalyptus trees getting too old and the deer population over-

'For further information on the history of Ardenwood Regional Park,
see Patterson Family and Ranch: Southern Alameda County In Transition, an
oral history project of the Regional Oral History Office, 1988.

291

populating. It didn't grow vegetables very well; the water was
contaminated.

It was a lovely place, but--
Lage: And it's expensive to maintain those old houses.

Pesonen: And it took a lot of staff, and that was expensive. So there was
some resentment of Ardenwood because it was sucking more than its
share of district funds.

Lage: Was this resentment from the board or the staff?

Pesonen: On the board. Harlan didn't particularly like Ardenwood, but he
didn't dare say so. And I don't think Mary Jefferds liked
Ardenwood very well either.

Lage: Well, it wasn't an open space kind of thing either.

Pesonen: No, it wasn't. And that was the other reason they didn't

particularly like it. But the political pressure, apparently,
had been very great. There had been a threat from the Fremont
area to pull out of the park district altogether.

Lage: They have Coyote Hills, near Ardenwood.

Pesonen: They have Coyote Hills. Coyote Hills is a very interesting place
for wildlife and for the study of wildlife and wetlands, but it
doesn't get a lot of use. It doesn't have the political support
that an Ardenwood does. Ardenwoods are like the T.V. world.
It's a fantastical Victorian house. People hold weddings there.
It's got a lot of middle class appeal, and it was about to be
turned into a housing development if the park district didn't buy
it. So I understand, at any rate. That was before I had gotten
there, and I hadn't known much about Ardenwood before I became
general manager. I sure had to learn about it when I was.

So Ardenwood was not liked by some of the board members, but
there wasn't anything they could do about it. The circumstances
of its origin and creation were too scary to try to take on
Ardenwood. Every once in a while, Harlan would say something
about, "We ought to get rid of Ardenwood," and then he'd back off
from it.

We had a lot of these little brush fires going all of the
time that never went away.

Lage: Were you asked to keep the budget down on Ardenwood?

292

Pesonen: No. The budget on Ardenwood was set; it's fixed. I mean, it has
a little annual increase, but it was already expensive when I got
there. It was an operating budget.

Lage: I did an oral history project on Ardenwood. Not just on

Ardenwood, but the whole development down there- -the Patterson
properties. I have a recollection of something about the manager
of Ardenwood; some controversy of his being transferred.

Pesonen: Yes, it was Dave Luten. He has since had a very serious accident
and sustained some brain damage. He lived up on Mission Peak; he
had a house up on Mission Peak. His wife and he had two kids.
He didn't come out of a traditional park background. He was a
high-energy organizer and a fixer-upper, and he was a person who
didn't have a lot of patience with going through the normal
procedures. He would barter with somebody for fenceposts or feed
for the animals, completely outside the budget; completely
outside normal procedures.

Lage: Sounds kind of refreshing.

Pesonen: It was kind of refreshing. But every once in a while he went a
little far. He also had the skill of maintaining his political
connections. He had his own political base, and people liked him
and they liked his iconoclastic freshness and his can-do way of
operating the park.

He thought there was a scandal involving the park down
there. He became convinced that there was some illegality going
on. I should remember, but I remember the chronic struggle with
him over that issue because I couldn't find any evidence of what
he was talking about . He thought that Lynn Bowers was on the •
take from some developer down there, and he was calling the
newspapers about it. The evidence didn't seem to materialize.
The accusations got out there, but then the evidence didn't seem
to materialize.

I wouldn't put it past Bowers. I didn't have a lot of
respect for Bowers' integrity, but I didn't see any evidence that
Luten had anything but plain old suspicions about it. He later
was transferred to another job in the park district, finally
and--

Lage: Was he transferred as a result of this?

Pesonen: It was an outgrowth of a number of things. He offended some

people over time, and he had some staff problems. I'm sorry, I
just don't remember the details.

293

Then, sometime after that, he was in a very serious bicycle
accident. He was hit on his bicycle riding down the hill from
Mission Peak by a passing car. I don't know what's happened to
him since. He's still alive, but I think he's just permanently
very seriously disabled.

Relations with Park Field Staff and Unions

Lage: Now, would you get out to the parks on a regular basis?

Pesonen: I tried to go out to the parks a lot. I made a special point of
going to field staff meetings. They had a regular meeting once a
month or once every two months, and I would always go. Trudeau
had never gone to those meetings, and many of the park district
staff said they had never met Trudeau; they'd never seen him in
the park.

Lage: Field staff meetings were all in the parks?

Pesonen: In all of the parks. He did not go out into the parks. I loved
to go out into the parks; I got out as much as I could. There
were meetings in the park, field staff gatherings of one kind or
another.

Lage: Did that make a difference, do you think?

Pesonen: I think it made a difference in field staff morale. There's
always a dichotomy between the field staff and headquarters
staff. Headquarters is management. I mean, it's never going to
go away. No matter how much time you spend in the parks, how
much time management goes out with a hands-on approach, that
dichotomy is never going to go away.

And then the field staff were unionized and their contract
came up every year or two years, and we always had a struggle,
and they always had a demonstration outside the board meeting
when they didn't think they got a good enough offer from
management .

There had been a strike under Trudeau 's tenure, a very
bitter strike, and there were still little echoes of that when I
got there.

Lage: Did you have to negotiate that personally, or did you have--?

294

Pesonen: Bob Owen did most of the negotiating. We'd lay out what our

position was going to be, and he did the hands-on negotiation,
along with our attorney whose name was Joe Wiley. Wiley had a
firm down in Emeryville, a big management-oriented employment law
firm.

Wiley was good, and Owen was good.
Lage: Did the board get involved in that heavily?

Pesonen: The board would only get involved at the end when it came time
for ratification of the contract and the union was holding out
for more. There would be a big meeting, a board meeting, and the
union would pack the board meeting. The board would throw them a
carrot of some kind, and we would get a contract and get on with
business. There were no strikes while I was there. But that
pattern repeated itself, and everybody knew the dance,
[laughter]

Lage : The union and you?

Pesonen: Yes, the union song was the same pretty much. It was a regular
ritual.

There were two unions. There was the union of the police
officers and the union of the rest of the field staff. Their
contracts came up at different times, and they tended to play one
off against the other sometimes, on various kinds of benefits.

Lage: You mean they didn't work together?

Pesonen: No, they didn't openly work together. Each would leverage its-
position off what the other had obtained the year before. 1
think they came up in alternate years. And the length of the
contract was sometimes an issue. There was an effort by the
board, I think, to have the contract talks renew at the same
time. The unions didn't like that. I think they saw it as
diminishing their bargaining leverage.

Quiet Victories in Chabot and Sunol Parks

Pesonen: There were a couple of things that I did which were not initiated
by the board but which were supported by the board, that I take
as my quiet little victories. One was getting the motorcycles
out of Chabot park. For years and years I had seen those off-
road motorcycles just tearing that hillside up, and I was told

295

that it was impossible to stop that; that the motorcycle lobby
would pack the board room and cause a lot of trouble and the
board would back down. Apparently that had happened in the past.

So I set out on a strategy to get the motorcycles out of
there, and it took about a year and a half.

t*

Pesonen: The motorcycling site was along Redwood Road in Chabot Park,

overlooking Upper San Leandro Reservoir. The riding had started
spontaneously twenty-five or thirty years ago, and by the time I
got in as general manager, there was a lot of activity. Every
weekend there would be motorcycles all over there.

Lage: That must have been deafening.

Pesonen: The roar and buzz and whine of those things--

Lage : The neighbors must have objected.

Pesonen: Well, there weren't any neighbors. It's out in the middle of the
park, and it's on the top of the ridge looking down over the
reservoir. So I involved Jerry Gilbert, who was the general
manager of the East Bay Municipal Utilities District. In fact, I
drafted the letter which he then sent to me formally telling me
that we ought to get the motorcycles out of there because it was
causing erosion which was polluting the water supply.

Lage: Had he noticed that before you drafted--

Pesonen: He noticed, but he hadn't really done anything about it. But he
was perfectly happy to help me. He didn't like the motorcycles
up there either. So I drafted this very strong letter from the
water district to the park district saying, "Get the motorcycles
out of your park because it's hurting our water system," and he
was glad to put it on his letterhead and send it to me. Then I
could wave it around at the board and wave it at the motorcycle
people.

And I did some other things. We got some vague promises
that there was an alternative site that had already been chewed
up by quarrying out in eastern Contra Costa County, that might be
suitable and the park district would--. We had a grant—we had
some money from some kind of a grant out of one of these park
bond measures — to develop an alternative site. We never did find
an alternative site. I don't think the money ever got spent,
actually.

296

Lage: How did you control the motorcyclists?

Pesonen: Well, we used--

Lage: You almost have to get their agreement.

Pesonen: Well, there is a motorcycle park way out there someplace, but

this was close in. It was just around the corner from Oakland,
and it was a lovely site, and it was scenic.

So we finally got them out of there. Then there was a major
rehabilitation effort: hydroseeding, laying mesh over the
hillside, which was terribly scarred and still looks scarred if
you go up there. As a matter of fact I was up there last
weekend. It looks a lot better than it did five or six years
ago, and it's coming back slowly.

Lage: Did you have to fence it or did you get the motorcyclists to
agree to this?

Pesonen: No, it had to be fenced. We got some money from that source of
funds. I just don't remember the details of that. I never was
very good at figuring out those things. I left that up to Owen
and other people.

Lage: You mean the grant money?

Pesonen: The grant money that was spent on that project and which financed
some of the rehabilitation. It's a good job. It's coming back,
and it's quiet up there. It's like a park now. And it's not
silting up the reservoir, which is still not open to the public.

Lage: That's one of the few that's not open to the public?

Pesonen: That's one of the few. Boy, I'd love to get into that, because
that's got big rainbow trout in it.

The other little triumph was the opening up of Sunol Park.
Lage: That had not been opened up?

Pesonen: It had been opened once some time ago, and then the San Francisco
Water Department hated the idea of the public running around on
its land, and the park district and the San Francisco Water
Department land intermingled out there. The main road that goes
up Alameda Creek and goes way back to Ohlone wilderness, cuts
across San Francisco Water Department land, then into park
district land, then into water department land, then into private

297

ranch, then back into park district land. There is the Grimmer
ranch back there.

For many years, since the Hetch Hetchy system was built, San
Francisco had kept the public out of that land. The only people
that were let in were the people that had in-holding ranches back
there who used that road. If you go back there now, there are
seven or eight locks on the gate. So if you went about a quarter
of a mile from the bridge out of Sunol Park, you came up against
a big fence which said "San Francisco Water Department—Keep
Out." It was horrible. Here you were in a big meadow with a
creek running right down alongside of you and this huge cyclone
fence telling the public to stay out of what looked like complete
wilderness, looked like an extension of the park. In order to
get into that country, you had to veer way up the hillside.

Lage: And you had to know that there was a way around?

Pesonen: You had to know that there was a way around, and it essentially
kept families, children, and a lot of people out of a very
beautiful part of the country. There is a little place up there
called "Little Yosemite," which has huge boulders and rocks
strewn down into the creek bed.

But the San Francisco Water Department was adamant that if
you let any people in there, they would go up the little road
that went to the southwest up out of the Alameda Creek Canyon to
Calaveras Reservoir, which is a major part of the San Francisco
Hetch Hetchy distribution system. It's been a kind of a private
little jewel for staff and guests of the San Francisco Water
Department for a long time. I've heard rumors of huge rainbow
trout in that lake, and nobody goes in there without permission.
It's heavily patrolled.

So there was a fear on the part of the San Francisco Water
Department old-time staff that somebody would come up and damage
or sabotage their filtration system—they had a chlorine
treatment plant up there- -that they would blow up the chlorine
treatment plant and a cloud of green gas would come down the
hillside and kill all of the people in the park. They had all
kinds of horror stories that would happen if we let anybody in
there.

Well, Rudy Nothenberg, who was the financial officer for the
mayor, or for the city, had been a good friend of Bob Connelly's
in Sacramento when they both worked in the legislature. So Bob
and I put it together. We brought Rudy and some of the water
department staff out there in the park district helicopter and
put on a nice little picnic thing with lunch out at Ohlone Park

298

and showed them this excrescence of a fence on our landscape and
got a promise that they really would use their influence to try
to get it solved.

Lage: Which city was Rudy with?

Pesonen: San Francisco. You know, out in Sunol there's the water temple,
and that whole area is--

Lage: Yes, it's incongruous when you see all that San Francisco stuff
out there.

Pesonen: Well, it was where they brought water down from Hetch Hetchy and
then shipped it under the bay over to Crystal Springs and that
reservoir system into the city.

Lage: And they keep Crystal Springs pretty well sealed off, too.
Pesonen: Yes. There's a lot of pressure to open that up, too.

So we promised that we would undertake the expense of a new
fencing system to discourage people from going up to Calaveras
Reservoir if we could open this property up. It wasn't until
late 1987, I think, that we did finally get this. It took two
years of steady effort, but the fence is down now and you can
walk all the way back into Sunol and Ohlone Parks .

Lage: I think Sunol is a great park.

Pesonen: Oh, it's a wonderful park. You still can't drive back there,

which is appropriate, but now you can go back there on weekends
and there's people pushing strollers and bicycles and there's all
kinds of people back there. That was--. Lynn Bowers, of course,
took credit for that. We had a celebration out there, and Lynn
gave a speech. That was fine, but I did that. I was real clear
that I was going to open that up.

What it did was to make an enormous amount of open space
available to people without any more significant expenditure
except the cost of this expensive fencing. It was a pretty
elaborate fence: it had to go up the hillside and over the rocks
and all. The city threw up every roadblock. They didn't like
the fence; complained it wasn't secure enough. By the city I
mean the real old guard in the city's Public Utilities Commission
and the water department.

Lage: When East Bay MUD has opened up so many of their reservoirs, how
does San Francisco continue these arguments?

299

Pesonen: Well, it embarrasses San Francisco.

Lage: Right across the bay they have Lafayette Reservoir and San Pablo
Reservoir open.

Pesonen: Exactly. It's a different political world. East Bay MUD has an
elected board; San Francisco Water Department has an appointed
Public Utilities Commission, appointed by the mayor. It's
insulated. And the Public Utilities Commission has the MUNI, has
the water system, two or three other activities. The water
department was a closed little world, and they were very skilled
at coming up with all kinds of arguments for why nothing should
change .

Lage: Well, that was a good accomplishment. Can you tell me anything
about Soraerville, the old coal mining area that was part of one
of the parks?

Pesonen: That's in Black Diamond Mines Regional Park.

Lage: Yes, Black Diamond. Didn't the park have some connection with
Somerville?

Pesonen: Yes, there was an abandoned Welsh mining town out there called

Somerville right in the park. I didn't have too much to do with
that. It seemed to be run well, and it had a manager of the mine
part who was very effective at getting money, and he was very
skilled at mine history and mine design; he understood all of
that, mine safety. That part ran itself well.

For the money, the attempt to reconstruct a little makeshift
replica of a village there at the park entrance never really got
very far as long as I was general manager, but that was because
of money. It was a catch-as-catch-can project, collecting old
buildings out of Antioch and Pittsburg that had been historic
buildings that were going to be torn down and get them moved up
there. It wasn't very well planned but that's just because it
was the nature of the resources that were available.

I don't remember any particular issues about Black Diamond
Mines .

Lage: Did these parks have any separate financial help from local
citizens?

Pesonen: Some of them did. Black Diamond Mines had some local support.
It was a historic mine, so you could get money from the federal
government for historic projects that you couldn't get for other
things. Sometimes you need a little citizens' advisory committee

300

to kind of oversee that or meet some qualification in the federal
application process.

Reorganizing the Interpretive Program

Lage:

Pesonen:

I had a note here to ask you about interpretive programs,
that an area where you made any changes?

Was

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

In the reorganization, the interpretive programs were brought
under the management of the interpretive parks. I think I
mentioned this in our last interview—the major part of the
reorganization that I undertook was to change the reporting
structure for all of the field parks. Before that it had been on
a geographic basis. You had southern Alameda; you had Contra
Costa, shoreline and inland Contra Costa; it was broken up
geographically .

I thought it made more sense and would be more efficient and
lead to better interpretive programs if the parks were classified
by the nature of the park. Shorelines and lakes, which had water
issues and water contact questions, fishing, used different kinds
of equipment and called for different expertise on the part of
the staff. The open space parks, which had in common grazing
issues, for example, management of their grazing program. And
the interpretive parks. I reorganized the system along those
lines. One of the purposes was to increase the emphasis on
professionalism in the interpretive programs, which were kind of
scattered and unconnected. The interpretive staff talked to each
other and had a manager, but they also had another manager, who
was their geographic manager. So I tried to consolidate that,
giving more coherence to their direction and planning. To some
extent that happened. It didn't happen overnight.

Were you happy with the interpretive efforts?

Well, some of it is personal. I thought the interpretive efforts
were not very aggressively promoted. They tended to involve the
same people over and over again.

You mean the same clientele?

Yes. The same clientele was part of it, and part of it was--I
can't think of the word I want to say is keetchy. [laughter)

How do you spell that?

301

Pesonen: I don't know how to spell it.
cute.

It was just a little bit too

Lage: Puppet shows?

Pesonen: Yes, that kind of thing. I didn't sense a lot of depth in the
interpretive program. That may be unfair. I don't want to be
unfair to that staff. Certainly Ron Russo, who took over in
charge of the interpretive program, was very knowledgeable about
interpretive programs generally, and he had some staff who were.

Lage: Was he somebody you got from outside?

Pesonen: No, he was there already, and he had been high up in the

interpretive program. He just took on a different title in the
reorganization, somewhat more administrative responsibility. I
thought the interpretive program was central to what the parks
were about. It never seemed to get anywhere. I think part of
that was the nature of those parks. It's amazing how few people
in the East Bay still really understand that park system. It's
not aggressively promoted in the way the one around Minneapolis
is. It's out back there some place. There's Tilden Park for
people who live in Berkeley, which is a unique park all to
itself.

Lage: It has everything.

Pesonen: Yes, it has everything. That was the original park.

That park system is a huge patchwork of wonderful stuff and
if there is a coherent idea about it, I never figured out what it
was. It's a lot of things to a lot of different people. It's a
place for picnics on weekends for a lot of people in southern
Alameda. Gar in Park is like that, although there is a lot more
of Garin Park that I think people don't know about.

Lage: Is there a historical element there in Garin Park?

Pesonen: Yes, there's an old ranch. Garin' s interpretive claim to fame is
its apple orchard. There are a lot of different varieties of
apples that were planted historically, some of them by the
original homesteader out there.

I'm puzzled about that park district. I never got a
coherent idea of what it was about. It was heavily used parks in
some places; it was an attempt to fend off development of
wetlands in other places; it was a trail system in other places;
it was an open space wilderness system in other places; it was
historic museums in other ways. It was a lot of different

302

things, and getting a coherent definition of it in my own mind
never worked. I don't know. Maybe it's not possible. Maybe
it's just the nature of the beast.

Lack of Support from the Board for Promoting the Parks

Lage:
Pesonen:
Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Did the parks newsletter start under your tenure?
The Log?
The Log.

Well, the Log was a colorless little publication, and all of the
brochures for all of the parks were out of date or smudgy little
xerox foldover things. There was abysmal promotion of the park
district. I concluded that that's the way a lot of the board
members wanted it . I thought there was a certain amount of
elitism there. They didn't want a lot of people in the park.

Did you conclude that by things that they said?

I concluded it by the policies they favored. They didn't want
money spent on promotion. I had to fight for the money to
promote the parks. I hired Janet Cobb as the assistant general
manager for development and public relations, and she was
dynamite. She came with a graphics design background, and she
agreed with me that the promotional materials for the park
district were abysmal.

They were years behind the times.

Yes, so she set out to change that. And the board fought the
budget for that and complained bitterly about it. They never
said anything nice about it, never complemented her staff on
their wonderful job of completely changing the publications
program of the parks. They were much more useful to people. She
started bringing in groups of disabled children for fishing
derbies at Temescal; all kinds of things she started to do to get
people into the parks . Every one of them was met with a sour
response by the board. I thought there was a certain amount of
misanthropism on the part of that board. They wanted open space

Lage:

for themselves and their friends, to say it most bluntly,
the way I often felt that board used the parks.

So they weren't keen on the interpretive programs and the
promotional efforts?

That ' s

303

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:
Pesonen:

No. They couldn't come out and be against them; they are too
much a part of what parks are supposed to be about. It was just
easier not to give them any help.

But also your political support depends, in part, on people
knowing about the parks and your effort to pass a bond issue and
all of that.

I don't think that park district really is very politically
visible. There's almost never been a contested election for
board seats. That's starting to happen now. Kay Peterson was
defeated three years ago or four years ago, maybe. Maybe it was

That was the first time a sitting board
has been defeated, I think, in living

just two years ago.
member, an incumbent
memory .

Was there some issue there?

Well, that was after I left as general manager. I'm not sure
what the issue was. I know the union supported her opponent.
The union hated her. She was a stupid little--. She epitomized
what I didn't like most about a lot of the supporters of the
board members. The board members had a very small constituency
that they listened to.

Where was she from?
She was from Lafayette.

They listened to a handful of people who were white, middle
class hikers, Sierra Club types who had no other social
conscience as far as I could tell, who I thought had a good deal.
They had, in effect, a huge backyard to play in and didn't want
any other people playing in it. I saw parks as a social device
for taking some of the tensions out of poor people's lives and
out of urban stresses. I didn't get the feeling that the board
had any sympathy for that by-and-large, or any sympathy for that
idea at all.

Yours seems to be more in line with Mott's ideas about parks.

Yes, and that's why Tilden is what it is. You could never build
a Tilden Park within the East Bay Regional Parks District now.
The merry-go-round would have been opposed; the pony rides would
have been opposed; the swimming at Lake Anza would have been
opposed; the golf course, of course, would have been anathema.
Maybe it is anathema, but nevertheless a lot of people use the
golf course. It gets a lot of use, and that's what parks should
get.

304

Lage: And who's to make judgments on other people's pleasures?

Pesonen: I'm not sure I want the rest of the park district to be like

Tilden, but I think the park district can use a park like Tilden
and maybe an Ardenwood too, for that matter. But the dominant
theme on that board was, in my view, to buy as much land for a
kind of private open space and promote it as little as possible
and not encourage public use, or if you are going to have any
public use, concentrate it in a few little places.

Lage: Did they talk in terms of a "land bank" idea for the future?

Pesonen: No, every park had to be open, had to be accessible. The board
certainly didn't oppose that, but they weren't in favor of going
out and bringing people into the parks and promoting their use.

That was certainly true of the promotions, and Janet Cobb
and I had a constant uphill fight. Mary Jefferds would try to
take money out of Janet's budget; she didn't want any money for
publications. She would never explain it as I'm speculating what
her motives were, nor did Harlan explain it as I am speculating,
but I drew the conclusions.

Lage: Then how did they explain it?

Pesonen: Well, you'd have a budget hearing, and they'd chop the budget.

Lage: Without too much explanation of it?

Pesonen: Without much explanation, and then we'd have to fight for it. Or
they'd find some excuse that the money was being misused or
something which had no evidence to support it. Harlan didn't .
like Janet, and Janet was a dynamite woman. She has gone out and
built her own political constituency. They can't get rid of her.

Lage: She's still there?

Pesonen: She's still there. [laughs]

Lage: Now what local constituency would she draw on? How do you build
one as a member of a staff like that?

Pesonen: She has taken the leadership in other organizations which have an
interest in the park district like the California Oaks
Foundation. She's on the board of the Planning and Conservation
League. She has really taken off, and she just has a wide circle
of friends and maintains a wide circle of acquaintances. She's
on the board of what used to be called Amendment 27, which was a
proposal for a federal constitutional amendment to protect the

Lage:

305

environment- -it's going to have to change its number now because
of the one the Congress just certified, the one about pay raises,
which we didn't even know about when we started the environmental
one.

Is that the environmental bill of rights?

Pesonen: I think that's it. We were calling it Amendment 27.

Anyway, she's very effective and very well respected and
she's the one who got Proposition AA put together. She put that
together almost single-handedly. That was a $125 million bond
issue for the park district. It was after I left. I was opposed
to it when I was general manager. She kept saying, "Let's go for
some real big money on a general obligation bond issue and get a
a two-thirds vote." I said, "You'll never do it," and she proved
me wrong. In fact, I resisted it when I was general manager.

Once I was gone, the main barrier as far as Janet was
concerned was out of the way, and she put it together. She
rounded up the support. She was opposed by Harlan all the way.
She set up the citizen's advisory committee to get it done, and
it went. It got 68 percent of the vote, I think. The park
district's rich now. It's got a lot of money. It's still
issuing these bonds under that authorization. It was a complete
triumph for Janet Cobb, and nobody else can take anywhere near
the credit that she did. She organized it. She's just an
enormous high-energy, well-organized person. She has very good
political sense and absolute stubborn determination, and when
she's going to do something, she's going to find a way to make it
happen. She certainly proved me wrong on a big general
obligation bond election. I have great admiration for her.

Lage: She should go to work for the school districts. [laughs]
Pesonen: Well, she may take that on next.

Working with City Officials and Environmental Organizations

Lage: Is there something else we should talk about here? We've talked
a little bit about East Bay MUD, state grants, which speaks to
the topic of relationships with other public agencies. What
about relationships with cities in the park district and with
organizations such as the Sierra Club?

306

Pesonen: Well, there was a certain tension between the park district and
some of the communities. A part of it just reflected Trudeau's
style, and part of it reflected some history, historic
developments where there had been some disagreements over policy.
The city of Richmond and the park district were not on good terms
when I got there. I set about to try and mend that because I had
lived in Richmond and been a judge out in that county, and I knew
a lot of the local public officials. I made an effort to try to
respond to Richmond's concerns.

Lage: Did they feel neglected in Richmond?

Pesonen: They felt neglected.

Lage: There was Point Pinole. Is that in Richmond?

Pesonen: That's in Richmond, but the difficulties had to do with Alvarado
Park, which is up there towards the north end of Wildcat Canyon
Regional Park. I don't remember what it was that had set off the
tensions there. Also the trail along the bay conflicted with
some of Richmond's shoreline development plans.

Pesonen: I set up a committee involving the city managers of Fremont,

Newark, and Union City and the Southern Alameda Water District,
which was involved with Alameda Creek. Alameda Creek was used to
recharge the ground water system down there, which affects
Ardenwood. Also we had a plan for the development of a wonderful
park in the quarries there in Fremont, [which are part of the
Alameda Water District], and that was slow-going. I think it's
finally getting off the ground. There was just a need for a lot
of coordination there, and I spearheaded that. That mended a lot
of relations.

Things were somewhat distant between the city of Fremont and
the park district. A lot of that I just noticed after I got
there, that people seemed a little chilly when I'd meet them at
social gatherings and things. I figured there was something that
happened while Trudeau was there that offended somebody, and I
was a new face, and I was going to go out and start over. I did
a lot of that. The park district rubs up against a lot of
different public agencies. I think I counted them once, sixty-
seven or seventy different public agencies: fire districts, water
districts, cities, counties, transportation systems, all of the
different governments.

Lage:

Is that an argument for regional government?

307

Pesonen: I think it could be an argument for regional government, yes. I
think it is an argument for regional government. There's a lot
of overlapping and lack of coordination.

My relations with the Sierra Club were pretty good. There
were some club members who were active in local environmental
matters that I got crosswise with. One was Alan La Pointe over
in Richmond.

Lage: Over what kind of issue?

Pesonen: It was over the development of the cleanup and fixing of Alvarado
Park and Wildcat Creek. There was a little bridge that was going
to be widened by the city right there near Alvarado Park to
improve local traffic conditions. La Pointe was leading a group
that was opposed to it; they wanted to keep it kind of rustic and
small. I didn't think it made that much difference. I said
something once that La Pointe took as suggesting that his only
reason was that he wanted to protect his own little property
values up in the canyon there.

Lage: He lived up there?
Pesonen: He lived up there.

So he was a bitter enemy ever after that and I happen to
think that I was—what he concluded, I thought, he concluded
correctly. [laughter]

Lage: So you did think that he was concerned with protecting his
property values?

Pesonen: Yes.

Lage: He may not have misinterpreted your remark?

Pesonen: He didn't misinterpret it.

Parks for the People or "Nimby" Preserves

Lage: When you referred to Sierra Club "types" earlier as being some of
the ones that wanted to try to preserve- -

Pesonen: I want to correct that. There is no such thing as a Sierra Club
"type" but there is a suburban middle class nimby, and I met some
who were probably some of the most active constituents of the

308

board members of the park district. It's a very small group of
people. They do reflect the values of a lot of people, and the
park district is very popular in the East Bay or it wouldn't have
passed Measure AA with a more than two-thirds vote. The parks
are a symbol of serenity and grace, and they are fairly well
managed. When people do come in contact with the parks, the
staff is friendly and helpful.

At bottom, my concern and frustration was that I wanted more
people to get into the parks and I didn't--. I was the wrong
person for that job because the people who seemed to have the
most influence with the board members were people who in my
estimation didn't want people in the parks.

Lage : So that would be a kind of a mission which should be stated by
the board in some way?

Pesonen: Right. Well, the board had a master plan—adopted their new
master plan while I was there—but the master plan was really
nothing but a set of maps about acquisitions. They had some
policies, but nobody paid any attention to the policies and
guidelines. They would look at the maps and the acquisition
plan. That's what it was really about.

Lage: Anything else you want to comment on before we leave the subject
of the East Bay Regional Park District?

[tape interruption]

Pesonen: I'll sum up my view of the park district and why I probably was
always out of phase with the board—not always, but enough so
that I didn't enjoy it there and I think we parted company
knowing that I wasn't the right person for a long-term cordial
relationship with the board. I had the strong feeling after I
had been there a while that the most vocal voices on the board
were influenced by a small group of essentially misanthropic
people. They were perfectly entitled to be misanthropic, but I
thought that this was a public agency, that everybody in the East
Bay paid for those parks, and everybody in the East Bay ought to
be able to use them. So it was a good-government view on my
part, as well as a philosophy about parks which was out of phase,
I felt, with what the emphasis that the dominant board members
had, and that tension never went away.

Lage: Some of those board members had been your original supporters
when you took the job?

Pesonen: Correct, because they didn't, I think, understand how strongly I
felt about that.

309

Lage: It sounds like they wanted a little wilderness system on park

1 QTM^ O

lands.
Pesonen: Very much so

310

XI RECENT WORK AS A PRIVATE ATTORNEY

Mediating the Dispute between the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club
Legal Defense Fund

Lage: Shall we go on to the work you did to mediate the dispute between
the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund?

Pesonen: That's been fairly recent.

Lage: I know. Is it too recent to talk about?

Pesonen: I think we can talk about it.

Starting in 1989, I think, a crisis point was reached in
which the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
found themselves on opposite sides of a political issue. It grew
out of litigation launched by the legal defense fund to stop
forest management plans in the Northwest which threatened the
habitat of the native spotted owl. That was a hot controversy,
as it still is, and one of the legal defense fund's staff lawyers
had openly criticized the club while the club was one of its
clients.

Lage: Was the club a client on this litigation?

Pesonen: Yes, but the club--so I understand--didn' t want to be quite as
aggressive as some of the other clients, the Oregon Audubon
Society and some of the others in the Northwest. The real
purpose of that litigation was to prevent logging of the last of
the old-growth forests in the Cascades. I think it was Senator
[Robert] Packwood who got a rider on the appropriations bill that
took jurisdiction away from the federal courts to hear such
suits, temporarily at least. The club lobbyist in Washington had
supported that amendment in exchange for a vote on something that
the club thought was more important to them in Alaska. The legal

311

Lage:

Pesonen:

defense fund's lobbyist took the opposite position on the
amendment and claimed betrayal by the club.

A falling out had developed, and the club's board threatened
to revoke what they maintained was the license to the Sierra Club
Legal Defense Fund to use the name Sierra Club. Over the years,
the name Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund had acquired its own
value in fundraising and identity with the courts and the public;
it's like a trademark. That threat to revoke the Sierra Club
name really threatened the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

Was it something the club could do?

Well, it's not clear. It wasn't clear to me. It wasn't clear to
the club; it probably wasn't clear to the legal defense fund.
But they were on the threshold of going to court, and I thought
that would be an enormous disaster for both organizations. It
would deprive them both of a very high level of public confidence
that they had enjoyed for a long time. It would be an unseemly
struggle, it would certainly be public, and it would, I think,
permanently damage both organizations. But it seemed intractable
for a while.

The president of the legal defense fund, Rick Sutherland,
was a very strong-willed person. The legal defense fund over the
years had grown into a substantial organization in its own right
with its own board.

Lage: It was, essentially, a separate organization?

Pesonen: It was a separate organization, but its origins were very

innocent and very casual. It was 1971 when the legal defense
fund was set up. I read all of the original papers, and there
was no written license. There was a proposal from Larry Moss, a
former board member, that there should be a written license, but
it just never seemed to happen, or if it did happen then it has
gotten lost.

Lage: I just recently interviewed Larry Moss. He was on the Sierra
Club board in the seventies and president for a year. He
recalled that when the defense fund was founded, he had insisted
that the Sierra Club retain the right to revoke the use of its
name. He says there was a resolution passed that the club could
revoke the name. Was there a board resolution?

Pesonen: There's a reference in the minutes to the need for a written

license, but there's no record of its ever having been executed.
The club president at the time I started looking into the problem
was Sue Merrow from Connecticut.

312

Lage: How did you get called to look into it?

Pesonen: Well, I kind of made it known that I would like to work on

resolving that dispute. I made it known to the principals. I
went around and talked to some people who were involved and got a
pretty good idea of what it was about and very much wanted to
help resolve it. I knew they were at each other's throats. It
was just very bitter. The correspondence back and forth was most
unpleasant, and it had gotten somewhat personal, and the Sierra
Club board had its back up. They felt that their hundred-year
ownership of the name was challenged. They were the preeminent
environmental organization in the country, and they perceived
there was confusion developing because the Sierra Club and the
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund would take different positions in
professional lobbying, such as the example on the appropriations
rider affecting the court's jurisdiction.

But there were deeper institutional reasons I began to
understand. The legal defense fund depended on the club for part
of its fundraising. The club was also its principal client. At
the staff level things ran quite well, but at the top policy-
making level, there was a sense—as I characterized it anyway--on
the legal defense fund's part that they were not being treated
with the dignity that they deserved. They had seven or eight
regional offices around the country, and Rick Sutherland had
built it up into a huge and very successful environmental
litigation organization, but they were still a kind of a little
brother to the club.

So I set about to see if 1 could mediate that controversy,
and I got myself appointed by both of them, accepted by both as
the mediator. They both had counsel, and counsel were hedging
their bets, getting ready to end up in court over trademark and
trade name interests. So at the beginning it was--. I was
working with both of the lawyers and representatives appointed by
each organization's board to negotiate—Rick Sutherland
principally on the legal defense fund's side, and Phil Berry and
Sue Merrow on the club side. Phil had been on the Sierra Club
board when the legal defense fund was first set up.

Lage: And he had been instrumental in establishing it, as I remember.

Pesonen: He had been instrumental. And on the other side there was Fred
Fisher who was with the Lillick law office in San Francisco,
which for many years had been on a small retainer to handle the
club's litigation. Fred Fisher and Don Harris, who had also been
with the Lillick firm, put together the papers to create the
legal defense fund as a 501(c)(3) organization, and it was all
very congenial and cordial and casual when it first happened. It

313

was a small operation with one staff person who transferred over
from the club staff to the legal defense fund staff. Through the
three executive director/presidents and particularly through Rick
Sutherland, the legal defense fund grew into a completely
separate entity.

Lage: It had other clients and--?

Pesonen: It had other clients and had plans to go international, and the
club felt a little threatened by some of that. They didn't know
where it was headed. The Sierra Club name would then appear in
France and Canada and Brazil without the club having anything to
do with it. The club had its own long-range ambitions for more
international activity.

I started meeting with both sides, and it took a long time
for a level of trust to develop so that we could start to make
some progress. I really got involved in it in early 1991 and
worked on it all through the year 1991. In the spring of 1991
we had a meeting in which it became clear to me that it was going
to be very difficult to come to a workable agreement that covered
all aspects of their relationship. I suggested that the legal
defense fund may wish to consider changing its name so that it
wouldn't be beholden to the Sierra Club anymore. That got some
initial favorable response. I went and spoke to the Sierra Club
board at a retreat they had out at Audubon Canyon Ranch and said
that this looked like the way this mediation was going to go. I
suggested that they get Walter Landor and Associates who were
very good at name changes. They had changed the name of Datsun
to Nissan successfully.

Lage: You mean in terms of public relations?

Pesonen: In terms of public relations, everything that goes with corporate
or institutional identity in the public. They have a fine
reputation, they are very successful, and I had worked with them
on some other things. But they also had represented the club, so
the legal defense fund was suspicious of that and wouldn't use
Landor.

Lage: Was this retreat a defense fund retreat?

Pesonen: No, it was the Sierra Club board. The reaction of the Sierra
Club board was rather lukewarm. There was an ambivalence.

Lage: They like having the connection?

Pesonen: They liked having the captive law firm. That sounds too cynical.
There was a symbiotic relationship there. They had a long

Lage:

314

history, and it had worked very well. The idea of severing it,
even an amicable severance, was an uneasy notion for a lot of
people. But the club recognized what had happened over the
intervening twenty years, and I got a letter from Sue Merrow
saying, "We are not particularly enthusiastic about it, but if
that's the direction the legal defense fund wants to go, why we
will, of course, give them our blessing."

Then the legal defense fund took a look at the problem and
at that issue, and they were uneasy about it, too. Then we got
back into trying to negotiate an agreement to cover all of the
relationships. The more we dug into it, the more issues came up
that had to be dealt with in any final contract or charter.
There was no written agreement ever between those two
organizations. There was a series of--

If there had been, it probably would not have been complicated
enough to handle everything.

Pesonen: Well, if there had been, maybe this controversy never would have
arisen. But there were lots of misunderstandings. There had
been changes of staff on both sides, and much of the history was
a kind of a common law of handshakes and agreements between the
executive director of the club and the executive director/
president of the legal defense fund. And just working habits. A
lot of it had to do with money; how the club raised money for the
legal defense fund, how the legal defense fund raised money from
many of the same sources as the club raised money from. Money
had a lot to do with it.

Lage: The club's development office also raises money for the legal
defense fund?

Pesonen: It's called a check-off. When you get your Sierra Club dues

notice, there is a place to check off and add some money for the
legal defense fund which cements in the donor's mind the
cohesiveness and connection of the activity of the two
organizations. There had been some experimentation with dropping
the check-off, but the check-off was a substantial source of
funds for the legal defense fund.

So there were all kinds of things. Limitations on lobbying,
what they could say--

Lage: The legal defense fund lobbies also?

Pesonen: The legal defense fund lobbies also, yes. They both have
lobbies, and they both have regional spokespeople.

315

Lage: And legal defense fund actions affect proposed congressional
legislation.

Pesonen: Exactly. So the effort to work this out ended up in something
like a twenty- five or thirty-page agreement which covered
fundraising; it covered lobbying and public statements; it
covered public relations generally; it covered use of
publications; it covered the timing of fund appeals. I've
forgotten all of the topics — I'd have to dig the documents out--
but it was very elaborate.

Late last year or early this year--I guess it was early this
year [1992]--! again appeared before both boards within several
weeks to present this agreement which had been hammered out over
many sessions, where we'd get one step forward, two steps back,
two steps forward, one step back. We'd get where it would look
like an agreement, and then they'd go back and think about it,
and they didn't like it. I finally presented this agreement to
the legal defense fund board and argued that it should be
adopted, that it was pretty much at the end of the line. There
wasn't much else that we could do, and the club had set a
deadline of the end of February this year for an agreement or
they'd go to court. The antagonism hadn't completely
disappeared.

Now, some of the delay and some of the difficulty in getting
agreement was because of some terrible things that happened
during the process. Rick Sutherland was killed last July, I
think, on the Sunday after I had met with him on Friday and
gotten his agreement to virtually everything that was left at
loose ends. I had persuaded him that in the long-range interest
of the legal defense fund he should be a little more flexible in
some areas.

One of the reasons I was chosen was that I knew all of those
people, and they all trusted me, and they trusted me not to take
sides. They knew that my main concern was to keep them both from
going to court and doing great damage to what they stood for. I
am a very good friend of Phil Berry, and I was a very good friend
of Rick Sutherland, and they were on opposite sides of this.
Mike Traynor, who succeeded Rick Sutherland, was a good friend
going way back to Bodega days. So I was personally acquainted
and, I think, respected by all of them.

Lage: Did Mike Traynor come out of the legal defense fund organization?

Pesonen: No, he was a private lawyer, but he was the president of the
board or had been for a long time. When they had to pick a
successor for Rick, he had reached a point in his career where he

316

wanted to do something different and they selected him as the
president and he left his law firm. He is still of counsel,
Cooley, Godward, Castro, Huddleson, and Tatum, I think was the
name of the firm, a very big, well-established, San Francisco law
firm.

Then, of course, Phil Berry had his terrible accident when
he was badly burned, and I was practically on scene for that.
Mary Jane and I had been camping with him that weekend, and he
was behind us on the road, and we lost sight of him, and then his
truck caught fire. He was very badly burned and in the hospital
for a long time. That came during all of this process, so that
held things up until he got healed. After he got healed then
Rick got killed. Each time one of these things happened, we were
close, I thought, to an agreement. Then the person who had to
make the agreement, that was in charge, was gone.

Lage: Were Fred Fisher and Don Harris involved?

Pesonen: No. They stayed out of it. They were on the board of the legal
defense fund, but they had stayed out of these negotiations.

Well, to my great surprise, after I met with the legal
defense fund board in early February or late January of this
year, I left the meeting feeling that they would swallow their
pride a little bit and sign this agreement which we had hammered
out over the previous year. To my astonishment, I learned a few
days later that they had voted to change their name. [laughs]

Lage: And is that the way it ended?
Pesonen: That's the way it is right now.

Lage: Oh goodness. Last time I talked to you it was probably before

you learned that because last time we discussed this you said it
was just on the verge of being signed.

Pesonen: Well, it was. Then they decided that the constraints- -
Lage: What kind of constraints?

Pesonen: Oh, there were lots of limitations on what they could say

publicly, and the club had to be their primary client, had first
choice of being their client. It was an entanglement, a lot of
entanglement. I began to understand that they felt like Gulliver
tied down by a bunch of Lilliputians in this agreement, and that
it was time to recognize history and go their own way, and do it
in an orderly, planned way. They have hired a consultant--!
don't know his identity; it may be confidential still- -who has

317

laid out plans for them for some years to make a gradual change.
I am informed informally that there is an interim very modest
agreement for a working arrangement during this transition.

But once they made that decision, they also decided they
really didn't need a mediator any longer. But they are not going
to court, which is what I wanted to have happen, and they are
working together as the legal defense fund goes its merry way to
become a different organization- -the same organization with a
different name. Maybe the John Muir Legal Defense Fund or
something else. Maybe they don't know what they are going to
call themselves ultimately, but it worked. And I charged them
for it; I got paid for it. I charged them $250 an hour and told
them, "I'm not going to do this for free because then you won't
take it seriously." They split it between the two organizations.

I think both organizations are going through terrible budget
problems because of the recession. Eleemosynary giving has
fallen off very sharply, and the idea of no longer paying
somebody to do something that they now are in a position to do
themselves makes sense.

So I think it was successful. The resolution was different
from what I thought would happen, but I had intuitively seen that
this was the way they were going to go a year ago and proposed
the name change. They weren't ready at that time. But as the
reality of thirty-five pages of entangling limitations on their
freedom began to sink in, they went along with what my intuition
had been a year before.

Lage: Did you sense that this was a philosophical difference, the
defense fund maybe being more bold than the club?

Pesonen: Well, sure they have different missions, and there have been

different ways of operating. The legal defense fund is a staff -
driven organization with a professional staff, mainly lawyers.
The Sierra Club is a much more political organization with an
elected board from across the country. They are contested
elections; they have a far wider agenda; and like any
organization of 600,000 members with as big an agenda as the
environment, is more cautious and less focused in its operations.

a

Lage: I know that the spotted owl-ancient forests issue has created a
certain controversy within the club also. I haven't gotten the
full story on that one. [See oral history interviews with Sierra
Club leaders Phillip S. Berry, Michael L. Fischer, and Edgar

318

Wayburn, in process, for more information on the ancient forests
issue and the conflict with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.]

Pesonen: I don't have a full story on how much that's a controversy within
the club either. But each institution has its own identity,
which is an outgrowth of its history and accidents of who was
there to shape it. Emerson said, I think, "An institution is the
lengthened shadow of one man." He said it before modern times
when women led organizations as well. There is some truth to
that. The legal defense fund was the lengthened shadow of Rick
Sutherland, who had a particular world view.

Lage: How would you characterize his world view? Was it distinctive?

Pesonen: Irreverent towards big business and government, gutsy, courageous
and shrewd, not very compromising, not willing to compromise
unless he didn't have much choice--

Lage: That probably wouldn't work well within the Sierra Club
organization itself.

Pesonen: No, they both have their strengths. I think the club wouldn't be
as strong and effective an organization if it were an Earth
First! militant, no-compromise--. As a matter of fact, it would
lose a lot of its members and a lot of its support and a lot of
its power. There's nothing invidious in that comparison. They
were just different kinds of institutions, and once the legal
defense fund was large enough to have a sense of its own self and
its destiny and institutional integrity, it was inevitable that
there would be some discordance. I think some of it might have
had to do with personalities. Rick could be abrasive.

Lage: Was Rick also a friend of Phil Berry?

Pesonen: Oh yes. Old friend. Although there were strains developed out

of this. And Mike Fischer, who was the executive director of the
club, he and Rick didn't get along together at all, so that may
have exacerbated it. But it probably would have happened anyway.
It just made my job a little harder.

Lage: Was Mike Fischer involved in these negotiations?
Pesonen: Very much so.

Lage: How did you feel he worked? Did you have a chance to evaluate
him as a--?

Pesonen: I think he's an effective administrator. That's a very difficult
job. I think working for the park district board was a piece of

319

cake probably compared to working for the Sierra Club board,
[laughs] There's nothing like working for volunteers because
volunteers' only reward is their psychic reward, their ego
reward. That's sometimes a lot harder to satisfy than a good

straightforward financial reward,
difficult to read.

They are also more erratic and

Lage: What was Sue Merrow's role? I'm going to be interviewing her for
the Sierra Club series.1

Pesonen: She's now the mayor, or first selectwoman of a little town in
Connecticut.

She very much wanted the dispute to be resolved, and she
worked very hard to see that that happened. She had hoped it
would happen while she was president. Phil had hoped it would
happen while he was president, the following year. It's a
measure of how intractable the problem was that it didn't happen
during either of their presidencies, although neither did they
end up in court suing each other during either of their
presidencies. And I don't think they are going to end up in
court now.

The State Farm Sex-Discrimination-in-Hiring Case; Managing the
Remedy Phase

Lage: Let's turn to your role in the State Farm case now, if we haven't
carried on too long for your attention and patience?

[tape interruption]

Pesonen: I think as I mentioned at the last interview, in the fall of 1987
I was pretty sure that I didn't want to stay at the park
district, and I got a call from Guy Saperstein--his firm then was
named Farnsworth, Saperstein, and Seligman- -asking me if I would
be interested in leaving the park district to manage the
Kraszewsk± v. State Farm case, about which I knew very little. I
read a little bit in the papers over the years, and I was
acquainted with Guy Saperstein and had followed his career. He
suggested some things I could go and read to find out more about
it, including the decision in 1985 by District Judge Thelton
Henderson finding State Farm liable for sex discrimination in

'Susan D. Merrow, "Sierra Club President and Council Chair:
Volunteer Leadership, 1980s- 1990s, " 1994.

Effective

320

recruitment and hiring of its sales force. It's a very long
decision, and I read the decision, and it was fascinating. It
was a very thoroughly tried case and a very thoroughly decided
case.

So I told Guy I would be interested.
Lage: The decision was made and you were going to manage--?

Pesonen: The remedy phase. In the fall of 1987, Guy was quite sure that
by early 1988 the court would approve a consent decree defining
the system and the procedures and the standards for selecting
class members who would be compensated. The original trial had
been brought by only three women, but on behalf of thousands who
had suffered discrimination in seeking the State Farm agent
positions with the company. So I told him I would be interested.
I didn't tell the park district board that. I did tell Jim
Duncan, who was president of the board, that I was looking into
this possibility, but that I didn't know if anything would come
of it.

So over several months Guy and I started negotiating an
employment agreement for me to be managing attorney of the claims
procedure. Then at one point when I was fairly confident that
Guy and I would be able to work something out--and the prospect
looked fascinating; it was a fascinating management problem--!
told the board that I was considering leaving, and I wanted to
negotiate a severance package. I negotiated both agreements
simultaneously with a target date of March 15 [1988] to leave the
park district, which was the day that Judge Henderson approved
the consent decree. That slipped a little bit, and I think it
was April 1 when I left the park district and I started with Guy.

When I started, we were at 505 14th Street, and I didn't
even have an office. The firm had leased a floor in the
building, or most of the floor in the building, which hadn't been
built out. So it was being built out when I got there. My
office was a table in the library on the eleventh floor, and the
whole Kraszewski case was going to be managed on the eighth
floor. The computers all had to be hooked up, and the phones,
and the staff had to be hired. The first thing to do was to go
out and hire a bunch of people, paralegals and lawyers.

Lage: Did this make the firm a lot bigger?

Pesonen: It immediately doubled the size of the firm. It ultimately

tripled and quadrupled the size of the firm. Ultimately, there
were at least thirty lawyers working on this project alone, and
then, of course, there was a lot more support staff and a lot

321

more paralegals. But when I started out I had the consent
decree, I had space that was being filled up, 103 bankers' boxes
of documents pertaining to male State Farm agents, not organized
or anything, and the prospect that a year and a half or two years
later we would start litigated hearings for each one of the
approximately 1,000 women that we selected as final claimants and
clients.

The whole thing was laid out in the consent decree, and it
wouldn't be fruitful for me to simply describe each detail. But
it was a very comprehensive private legal system—the judges were
called special masters appointed by name. The elements of proof
that each woman had to establish for her entitlement, the formula
for what damages she would recover in back pay and front pay--

Lage: That was all set out?

Pesonen: It was all set out. The first thing that happened was that
notices were sent out to 70,000 women that they had an
opportunity to be considered in this process. Out of that, about
6,500 responded in a timely way and filed a little form.

Lage: Who were the 70,000 women?

Pesonen: They were all women who had any kind of employment contact with
State Farm since 1974.

Lage: You got records of people who had come in for interviews?
Pesonen: Yes, State Farm had to mail this notice out.

Then, out of that 6,500 we would select up to 1,193, I
think, which was the number of male agents appointed during the
period covered by this case going back to 1974. The theory of
the consent decree was that we would challenge each male
appointed with a woman, on the theory that a woman should have
been appointed. We knew that we wouldn't prevail on all of
those, but that was the maximum number, because the pleading, the
document which finally established the final claimants' right to
go to a hearing, was a claim form which named a male agent, the
date of his appointment, who he was. We had his file, and we
would then go to a hearing and establish that the woman was
qualified and would have been appointed in the absence of State
Farm's discriminatory policies.

Lage: Did you have to pick a woman who applied about that time?

Pesonen: Yes, it had to be a woman who applied within that time period or
had been deterred from applying in that general time period.

322

That time period was very specifically laid out in the consent
decree also.

Well, I developed a plan, hired the staff, did the training,
set up some systems for numerically ranking the strengths of each
one of these people. There were some tests that they had to
take. We had to organize all of that all over the country.

Lage: You ran a kind of an employment bureau.

Pesonen: It had some qualities of that. These tests were given in high
school auditoriums so we could monitor them. State Farm
administered the tests and the state Department of Insurance
administered some of them, and we would be there to answer
questions from the women and had the staff all over the country
going to these meetings. There would be a whole auditorium full
of 100 to 200 women taking this exam to get into this process.

We boiled that down to about 1,400 from the 6,500 who had
responded to the mailing. Then we interviewed every one of them
in a lengthy, structured interview, made a report, developed a
numerical ranking system, established their time periods, then
filed final claims for them and started into the trial process.

Lage: Now, was there a precedent for this way of handling a case?

Pesonen: Not on this scale. It had never been done before, and I suspect
it will never be done again. [laughter] Because it got very
expensive, and it was very stressful. It was just as stressful
for State Farm as it was for us; maybe more. It was certainly
more expensive for them. We had heard that it was costing them
about $30 million a year just to defend against what we had set
up.

Lage: They already lost on the consent decree?

Pesonen: They had lost on liability; it was established that they had
discriminated against women as a matter of law.

Lage: But then they were fighting the amounts?

Pesonen: We had to find out which women. Each one of these women who went
to hearing to prove the specific elements had to show that she
was an actual victim of the discrimination, not just somebody who
walked in off the street and filed a piece of paper. Those were
very intensely litigated hearings. State Farm's attorneys,
Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, threw everything at it. It
was a scorched earth defense as Guy Saperstein describes it.

323

Lage: Did you argue those cases or did you manage everybody else?

Pesonen: I argued some. They were tried, we called witnesses, had

depositions, put in exhibits, wrote briefs and got decisions. 1
ended up trying nine out of about seventy that went to hearing.
I won five, I lost two, and two are still awaiting decision; I
don't know how they are going to come out.

Lage: And how about the other sixty-one?

Pesonen: We were winning about 45 percent of those that were tried; they

were settling half, and of the half that went to hearing, we were
winning about a little less than half of those. If we won at
each one, it was roughly $700,000 to the claimant and another
couple of hundred thousand dollars of attorney's fees on top of
that for all of the work we put in. Over time, it became
apparent to State Farm that this process would go on until maybe
1998 and the value of each claim was increasing with time because
of an accumulated back-pay formula with interest so that the
claims that would go to hearing in the late 1990s would be worth
over a million dollars a piece, and we had 800 of those left,
roughly. So an overture to try to settle all of this was made
last fall.

Lage: By State Farm?

Pesonen: By State Farm. And in about September of '91 through January of
this year [1992] we negotiated a very comprehensive settlement
program which gave each woman less than she would get if we went
to trial and won, but with the certainty that she'd get it. The
condition was that 87.5 percent of about 821 cases remaining had
to accept it or it was voidable. It ended up that 89 percent
accepted the offer.

Lage: So they preferred the certainty?

Pesonen: Well, it was a healthy chunk of cash. No woman got less than
$135,000, and most of them got up in the range of between
$150,000 and $200,000. Some over $200,000, depending on the year
of the challenged appointment. So the total was $157 million and
814 out of 821 accepted that. The other seven felt that they had
such good cases they would go for the full value, and State Farm
immediately settled two of those for full value, which was a lot
of money. The others are settled, all but one, which is going to
go to trial in July of this year. Then there are ten or twelve
that were tried before the settlement that are awaiting decision
from the special masters. So it is just about wrapped up. It
will be wrapped up by this fall. Now the total amount recovered
for the women is going to be over $200 million.

324

Lage: How about the total amount recovered for the law firm?
Pesonen: Well, that I'm not at liberty to say, but it's a lot.

Lage: There is always the popular perception that the lawyers are the
ones who win in these cases. Do you think that's justified?

Pesonen: The lawyers did very well. The lawyers are not complaining. But
when you consider that Guy Saperstein started this case sixteen
years ago and had to take the risk of all of the overhead, hiring
all of the people and building a new office, taking on the
enormous liability of possible malpractice if anything were
mishandled in this claim procedure, he's not been overcompensated

in my opinion,
be.

He's a wealthy man after this case, and he should

Lage: Does he have to adjudicate his own compensation?

Pesonen: No, that's part of the deal. But I don't know any lawyer who

would take that kind of risk for that long. There were periods
when he had three mortgages on his house to finance this case, to
keep it going, and long periods of time when he was deeply in
debt and didn't get paid at all. And I'm sure he went through a
lot. It's the American way. I mean, it's a gamble.

Lage: Was the law firm always in the field of sex discrimination?

Pesonen: Civil rights, which includes sex discrimination; it includes race
discrimination, and the firm now does nothing but a lot of class
actions against large employers. Several cases going against
large grocery chains for sex discrimination in the promotion and
hire of their clerical or management staff. We have one huge
case going in the South against a restaurant chain for race
discrimination. We are starting to move more—we are hoping at
least- -to move into large environmental cases.

Lage: And these will also be large class actions?

Pesonen: Well, not necessarily class actions, but large cases involving
lots of money and lots of--. Well, they won't be just your
little not-in-my-back-yard garbage dump cases. We don't know
exactly what they are going to be yet, but they could be large
toxics cases, toxic contamination, air pollution, water
pollution.

Lage: Is that what you are going to go into?

Pesonen: That's what I'm supposed to go into. I'm just starting to work
on it .

325

Lage:
Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

Pesonen:

Lage:

What will that involve?

Well, it's never been done before on this scale
large class actions settle with a formula. The
a chunk of cash, which could be a lot of money,
in and file a form and get a little piece of it
get ten cents on the dollar. In the State Farm
were close to being fully compensated, but they
this ordeal to reach that level of compensation
the largest amount of money ever recovered.

Most of these
defendant puts up
Then people come

They usually
case these women
had to go through

It is certainly

Was this Guy Saperstein's idea that it would be done on such an
individual basis?

Yes. Well-
He put it across to the judge?

There's a U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The case involved a
teacher's union versus the United States in 1977, I think, which
reasoned that when the injury is as personal as sex
discrimination and as individual to the victim, that an
individually tailored remedy for each member of the class was
preferred to a formula distribution. A formula distribution is
favored in cases where the amount of recovery is small and the
injury is fairly economic, such as antitrust violations, for
example, where you are overcharged $1.50 for a pair of Levi's or
your bank overcharges you $1.50 for each bounced check, that sort
of thing.

It doesn't make sense to go through this kind of process for
that kind of case, but where you are deprived of a career path
that could be very lucrative—you know these State Farm agents
make a lot of money—and shunted off into a clerical position or
some other career path, it is really a distortion of what your
life would be but for this illegal conduct. We are talking about
something a lot more personal and a lot more freighted with

emotional and identity issues, and a lot of money,
only place you make your money, is your work.

That's the

And, on the other hand, each woman had to show that she was a
potential hiree?

That's right, and that she had the qualifications and the
interest.

It sounds very interesting. Did you enjoy working on it?
must have been a great management problem.

It

326

or

Pesonen: It was, but I loved it. I love big management problems. I love
new challenges. This was an unprecedented challenge.

Lage: How did it compare with managing the Department of Forestry
the regional parks in terms of just the management?

Pesonen: Well, those were public agencies. They are subject to a lot of
rules and constraints. The Department of Forestry, managing it
is 80 percent people and motivating, training, selecting, and
guiding. The rest of it is inspiration and leadership. The
mission here was very clear, simple, and straightforward. The
mission of a public agency often is very diffuse. They have many
missions--

Lage: And many more complications?

Pesonen: --and many more complications, but in the personnel area there
are many more constraints, too. You can't just go out and hire
people who you think would do a good job, you have to go through
the civil service system, deal with unions; in the state you are
completely stuck with the civil service system except in very
rare instances. Here we could just put ads in the legal
newspapers that said we want lawyers with certain minimum
qualifications, and then we interviewed hundreds to select the
correct staff. So at least the recruitment and hire part is far
different from public agencies. The personnel management, a lot
of it is the same. It is just common sense. You treat people
fairly, compensate them fairly, give them some sense of self-
worth about what they are doing, some clarity about what is
expected of them, and they do a good job. They really did a good
job on this case.

Lage: That's a good place to end. Shall we cut off now or do you have
anything else you want to say?

Pesonen: No, I don't think so. I'll probably think of something when I
look at the transcript.

Lage: You can add it then.

Transcriber: Kian Sandjideh
Final Typist: Shannon Page

327

TAPE GUIDE- -David E. Pesonen

Interview 1: December 17,

Tape 1, Side A

Tape 1, Side B

Tape 2, Side A

Tape 2, Side B

1991

Interview 2:
Tape 3,
Tape 3,
Tape 4,
Tape 4,
Tape 5,
Tape 5, Side B not recorded

January 23, 1992

Side A

Side B

Side A

Side B

Side A

Interview 3:
Tape 6,
Tape 6,
Tape 7,

February 12, 1992
Side A
Side B
Side A

Tape 7, Side B not recorded

Interview 4: February 27, 1992

Tape 8, Side A

Tape 8, Side B

Tape 9, Side A

Tape 9, Side B

Interview 5: March 12, 1992
Tape 10, Side A
Tape 10, Side B
Tape 11, Side A
Tape 11, Side B

Interview 6: April 2, 1992

Tape 12, Side A

Tape 12, Side B

Tape 13, Side A

Tape 13, Side B

Tape 14, Side A

Tape 14, Side B not recorded

1

12
21
33

38
48
59
68
79

82
92

102

112
123
133
143

152
162
173
184

188
200
210
221
233

328

Interview 7: May 14, 1992

Tape 15, Side A 236

Tape 15, Side B 247

Tape 16, Side A 258

Tape 16, Side B 270

Tape 17, Side A 281
Tape 17, Side B not recorded

Interview 8: May 28, 1992

Tape 18, Side A 284

Tape 18, Side B 295

Tape 19, Side A 306

Tape 19, Side B 317

329

APPENDICES--David E. Pesonen

A. Karl Kortum letter on Bodega, San Francisco Chronicle,

3/14/62 330

B. "The Battle of Bodega Bay," by David Pesonen, Sierra Club

Bulletin. June 1962. 331

330

Appendix A. Karl Kortum letter on
Bodega, San Francisco Chronicle. 3/14/62

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Atom vs. Nature at Bodega

Editor — Harold Gilliam's article
"Atom vs. Nature at Bodega" (This
World, February 1 1), described
how one of the few harbors on our
almost harborless Northern Cali
fornia coast is going to be hacked
and filled and finally disfigured by
an atomic power plant. How a
great, brooding California head
land, sea-girt and of ancient gran
ite, will be given a profile like
neighbor Richmond and its gas
tank How a large State park at
Bodega has been killed, and a
county park will be made to en
gorge steel towers and the familiar
droop of transmission wires.

Nearly a quarter century ago, I
fished for some days running out
side the Tomales Bay bar. Bodega
Head lay to the north, enveloped in
moods and mists like a cape thrust
into the Irish Sea. I never closed
with this headland and indeed re
moteness seems much of its char
acter. Even today no highway has
ever been scratched in angular sur
vey down its soft contour. And a
bay filled with fishing boats inter
venes between it and the nearest
gathering point of the automobile.

Conservationists from the State
Park Commission and the National
Park Service came in the last dec
ade to walk among the lupine and
decide that this should be a public
preserve.

But about the same time came
men of a different type. They too
walked out on the point and gave
it the triumphant glance of dem
igods.

I am reconstructing. These men
are engineers from a public utility,
and as a member of the public it is
my privilege and duty to speculate.
The scene shifts to the home
office:

"Our engineering boys think we
ought to grab Bodega Head ."

"They do' (low whistle) That
might be a little rough."

"Why? Why more than Moss
Landing or Humboldt Bay?"

"Well, it's more scenic. There
will be more protest. The State
park people and the national park
people are already on record for
public acquisition."

"Our engineers sav we need it.

We'll just buy, fast. Get in ahead
of them. It's legal."

"Well . . ."

"What we can't buy we'll con
demn."

"What about public protest. This
one could ge^ a little noisy."

"Keep it at the county level. Or
try to Every service club in every
town has got our people in it rub
bing shoulders In the country,
opinion is made at the weekly
luncheon . . ."

"How about the newspapers'"

"It's the local businessmen who
buy the space. Oh, I don't say we
haven't got some work to do. But
these guys have got other things on
their minds — they're scratching
out a living."

"Have you got an angle? I mean
apart from the< fact that we want
it."

"Oh, sure We'll get out some
releases and speeches on how the
county tax base will be improved.
We might even try calling it a
tourist attraction ."

"And the county officials'"

"They're o.k. We'll set the tone
up there and they'll respond to
it Just as elected representatives
should Oh, you might get some
idealist . . ."

What is the matter' Why do
these things come to pass'

The answer is simple Our engi
neer demigods are obsolete.

The idea of shaking their ped
estals to see if they will topple over
has only lately come upon us. (A
covey bit the dust lately when
the Tiburr n Bridge 'was canceled >

The engineers of this public util
ity may find that their callousness
has crested at Bodega Head. Just as
the Toll Bridge Authority engineers
crested with the bridge that sags
frugally from Richmond to San
Rafael Or the highway engineers
with the two-deck freeway that
spoils the Embarcadero.

An atomic plant doesn't have to
be built at Bodega Head. Without
any expertise whatsoever, I can
make that statement categorically.
It is just a matter of whose engi
neers you listen to.

Engineers have amazlne re

sources. They have been able to
prove that it is mechanically impos
sible for a bee to fly ...

"You can't lick the biggest 'city
hall' of them all . . ." wrote Ed
Mannion in his column in the Peta-
luma Argus - Courier on February
17, pointing out that two friends,
one a member of the county grand
jury and the other a prominent
newspaper reporter, had urged him
to give up the fight.

Well, Ed, you can lick them If
everyone reading this would take
five minutes to write a letter they
would be licked. But a licking is not
what to ask for; regulation is suf
ficient — regulation in the full
Breadth of U* pijWk. »*eiesi. We
have a Public Utilities Commission
charged with doing just that.

KARL KORTUM.

San Francisco.

FEPC Progress

Editor — To correct the impres
sion readers may get from your
report of results obtained by the
California Fair Employment Prac
tice Commission ("Progress Re
port by State FEPC", March 8)
may I explain that the agency has
reached a determination in more
than 1000 cases as to whether the
evidence indicates discrimination
m employment on account of race,
religious creed or ancestry

In 36.6 per cent of those cases
such evidence was established
and corrective action taken. In the
remaining cases, there was insuf
ficient or no evidence and the
cases were dismissed

FREDCUNSKY.
Information Officer, FEPC.
San Francisco.

'Living Future'

Editor — The resumption of ot-
mospheric tests is merely a symp
tom of our failure to reduce world
tensions. It is unrealistic to blome
eoch new step in the orms race on
the malevolence of the Russian
leaders . . .

Negotioting means give and
take, ond this process might force
us to give on some positions, but
the result could be o better world
because we could reasonably ex
pect o living future.

MIRIAM M. HAWLEY.

Berkelev

331

The Battle of Bodega Bay

Appendix B. from

Sierra Club Bulletin. June, 1962.

By David E. Pesonen

BODEGA'S headland is a bold arm of gran
ite curving into the Pacific Ocean about
fifty miles north of San Francisco. It curls
nround Bodega Harbor and protects the
fishing village of Bodega Bay and the Meet
in the harbor from the heavy wind and surf
that beat against California's northern coast.
Since the main north-south highways run far
inland at this point, the Bodega area was,
until recently, relatively little known among
scenic attractions of the Pacific shoreline.
But never again will it be a sleepy, remote,
wildly beautiful place off in a far corner.

On March 7, the state Public Utilities
Commission opened hearings on an applica
tion by the Pacific Gas and Electric Com
pany for a "certificate of public convenience
and necessity" to construct a $64 million
nuclear fueled electric generator at Bodega
Head.

The hearings took eight days, spread over
a four-month period, during which the util
ity argued that Bodega Head is an attractive
site for a nuclear reactor for a number of
reasons — some ostensibly technical, but at
the root mostly economic. The headland's
close proximity to the growing San Fran
cisco Bay Area would assure low power
transmission costs. Harbor facilities for
transporting fission products are ideal. And
since present reactors gulp great volumes of
cooling water, Bodega Head, the Company
asserted, is about the only site in the region
where cheap intake and outlet structures are
feasible. If built, the Bodega Bay plant
would be a "breakthrough" for private cap
ital. It would, according to Mr. N. R. Suth
erland, the Company's president, "produce
electricity ... as economically and as reli
ably as available conventional fuels."

Opposition to the plant was vigorous,
widespread, and at times acrimonious. Bo
dega Head is a seismic stepchild of the San
Andreas Fault. It is a block of granite sep
arated from the mainland by this greatest of
the Earth's rifts, and it appears to have ar
rived where it is through movement along
this fault. Understandably, residents of the
town of Bodega Bay are uncomfortable at
the thought of a nuclear reactor virtually in
their front yard, on the skirts of the same
fault which heaved in the 1906 San Fran
cisco earthquake. Further, the excavated
granite would be used as fill for a heavy
duty road to the plant along the Harbor's
tideland, obliterating the rich clamming-
grounds and endangering the fishing fleet
during heavy weather. Powerlines from the
plant are mapped to stream across the har
bor mouth, down the length of the county's
Doran Park, a sandspit which defines the
southern border of the harbor.

The University of California, which is

SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, JUNE. 1962

now in litigation to condemn a strip of
property next to the P.G.&E. holdings for a
marine research station, took a neutral stand
at the hearings. Despite a parade of marine
biologists who testified that the temperature
and radiological effects of the plant would
certainly affect local marine life (to an un
known degree), the Chancellor's representa
tive at the hearings told the Commission
that the University "neither supports nor op
poses" the power installation. He added that
the plant would not "render the [marine]
site unusable." But he declined to state
whether the marine station would be a bet
ter research facility without the reactor next
door.

Although the State Division of Beaches
and Parks had plannned in 1955 to acquire
all of Bodega Head for addition to the state
park system, all interest was withdrawn in
1958 for lack of county enthusiasm and be
cause the area had been "spoken for." The
Division's representative at the P.U.C. hear
ings took a position similar to the Univer
sity's. Although he testified that the State's
interest was lukewarm because enough of
the Bodega-type shoreline was already in
state ownership, under cross-examination he
could cite no comparable area.

The Sierra Club's opposition to the plant
was based on two principles: (1) The alter
native uses of Bodega Head are of higher
value than the proposed plant and would by
their nature preclude its construction, and
(2) The cost of power is an inadequate meas
ure for determining "public convenience
and necessity" at Bodega Head. The Com
pany already runs three plants along the
coast; the Bodega plant would be the fourth.
"The future demands for energy- are going
to be too great for the public to wish a series
of precedents that would result in the sys
tematic picking off of irreplaceable scenic
and recreational sites for power genera

tion," the club's statement said. "One kilo
watt hour looks just like every other kilo
watt hour, and this energy should come from
the transformation of common resources, not
from the transformation of unique sites."

The statement of the Sierra Club argued
that "it is not really a 'breakthrough' at Bo
dega Head if no other site is competitive.
This would merely demonstrate the penin
sula's uniqueness. It is of questionable eco
nomic value, in the advancing technology of
nuclear electric generation, to demonstrate
that only with the most fortuitous proximity
of bay, ocean, and peninsula can the nuclear
process be competitive. A comparable situa
tion would be to have the utility allege that
only by using Yosemite Falls could it build
a competitive hydroelectric plant, and then
claim a 'breakthrough' by building a plant
that would require using up this unique re
source. Engineers can surely do better than
this. They must."

Unless startling new evidence is uncov
ered, no further hearings will be held by the
Public Utilities Commission. The final de
cision is not expected until late in the sum
mer, after the Company provides some addi
tional seismic data requested by the Com
mission's staff, and after the Commission
members convene formally to assess the
eight-volume record of testimony at the
hearings. A great many complex technical
questions remain to be answered before a
final decision is rendered.

The club's statement concluded: "The
public is entitled to know how much more
an individual's monthly electric bill will be
increased — or decreased — by using alterna
tives. ... If there were [no alternatives],
the public might very well be willing to buy
a little less electricity each month in prefer
ence to destroying a scenic resource that is
the last of its kind on a coast that belongs
to the world."

Bodega Bay
looking north.
John Lf Baron

photograph

INDEX--David Pesonen

332

A Visit to Atomic Park. 37, 38,

49-53, 55-56, 59, 69, 87, 99,

101
affirmative action, 206-209, 222,

228

Agretelis, Demetrios, 253
Alper, Roy, 184
Alquist, Alfred, 206, 225
Alvarado Park, Richmond,

California, 306-307
American Civil Liberties Union

(ACLU), 57, 236
American Friends Service

Committee, 57, 85
Anderson, Glenn, 74
Anschults, Phillip, 282
Ardenwood Regional Park, 290-293,

304, 306

Arnason, Richard, 247-248, 255
Arnold, Byron, 136-137
Association of Bay Area

Governments (ABAC), 270
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railway, 283. See also Santa
Fe Pacific Railway
Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 79
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) ,

47-48, 50, 54, 56, 58, 60-61,

66, 71-75, 89, 97-99, 123-126,

142, 172
atomic power. See nuclear power.

Baker, Richard, 185-186

Baker, William, 285

Barsotti, Mario, 109-110

Barzaghi, Jacques, 185, 187

Behr, Peter, 72

Belli, Melvin, 92-93

Bennett, William, 61-62, 89, 160-

161

Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, 263
Bernstein, Malcolm, 108-110
Berry, Phillip, 44, 54, 83, 191,

193, 312, 315-316, 317-318, 319
Bird, Rose, 228, 240, 242-243

Black Diamond Mines Regional Park,

299-300
Black Panthers, 91, 108, 112, 116-

119, 142, 150, 256
Blease, Coleman, 236, 238
Bodega Bay, Ca. : proposed power

plant, 34-35, 37-105, 112, 115,

119, 122, 124, 125, 128, 153,

160, 163, 185, 236
Bonneke, Hazel, [now Mitchell] 50
Bosco, Douglas, 225
Bowers, Lynn, 268, 270-274, 275,

289, 283, 285, 292, 298
Brand, Stewart, 185
Bridenbaugh [nuclear engineer],

171

Brotsky, Alan, 112, 142, 150
Brower, David, 28-29, 31-33, 42,

44, 46-48, 52-53, 99-100, 102,

128, 178-179, 188
Brown Act, 288
Brown, Ira, 139-140, 238
Brown, Jerry, [Edmund G., Jr.],

32, 103, 150, 179, 180, 182,

185-242, 244, 249
Brown, Pat [Edmund G. , Sr.], 53,

55, 56, 74-75, 171-172
Brown, Willie, 194, 269
Budnitz, Bob, 185
Bunnelle, Hasse, 33
Burch, James, 162-163, 165-168,

173-175, 179
Burton, Phillip, 190
Bush, George, 192

California Coastal Act of 1976,

198-199
California Energy Resources

Conservation & Development

Commission, 180
California Environmental Quality

Act (CEQA), 139, 224-225
California State Board of

Forestry, 32, 42, 188-199

333

California State Department of

Agriculture, 196
California State Department of

Finance, 203, 206, 210, 213,

217, 226
California State Department of

Fish and Game, 30-31, 126-127,

198, 223, 228
California State Department of

Forestry, 190-191, 194, 198-236,

239, 263, 284, 326; director of,

129, 142, 150, 187, 198-235.

See also fire fighting.
California State Department of

Highways, 57
California State Department of

Insurance, 322
California State Department of

Parks and Recreation, 50, 284
California State Department of

Transportation (Caltrans), 140-

141
California State Department of

Water Resources, 196
California State Division of Mines

and Geology, 228
California State Highway Patrol,

210-211
California State Legislature, 139-

140, 179-183, 194, 206, 223-226,

228, 269-270, 285; Assembly

Committee on Resources, Land

Use, and Energy, 180-181;

Assembly Fish and Game

Committee, 29-31; Assembly Rules

Committee, 14-15, 269
California State Personnel Board,

206-207, 208
California State Public Utilities

Commission (PUC), 42-45, 46-48,

50, 53, 58, 60-61, 89, 97-98,

103, 126, 160
California State Resources Agency,

199-200, 202-205, 211-217
Californians for Environmental and

Economic Balance, 185
Californians for Nuclear

Safeguards, 161, 162, 165-166,

184

CalPIRG (California Public

Interest Research Group), 154,

184

Calvert Cliffs. 66
Carroll, James, 131-137, 254
CBS (Columbia Broadcasting

System) , 132
Central Valley Project, 10-12, 40-

41

Champion, Dale, 123-124
Channell, William, 242, 244
Choper, Jesse, 106, 242
civil rights, 38-39, 111, 274,

276, 319-326
Civilian Conservation Corps, 3-4,

7

Clark, Lewis, 47
Cleaver, Eldridge, 107, 117
Cleaver, Kathleen, 117
Cobb, Janet, 269-270, 271, 302,

304-305
Cocke, Dwight, 159-160, 162, 165,

170, 184

Coffey, Bert, 251
cold war, 35-37, 41
Combs, Joycelyn, 275
communism, 35-36, 41
Communist party, 35-38, 41, 114
Connelly, Robert, 14-15, 19, 31,

206, 214, 222, 225, 226, 262-

263, 269, 297
conservation. See environmental

protection.
Contra Costa County Superior

Court, 31, 111, 138, 139, 236-

259
Contra Costa Times. 242-243, 246,

249, 255-256
Coyote Hills, 291
Cranston, Alan, 190
Creative Initiative, 162-178, 186
criminal law, 116-119, 247-249,

256

Crooks, Afton, 264-266, 276-277
Crosby, Heafey, Roach, and May,

273-274

Davis, city of, 140-141
Davis, Gray, 185
Davis, Pauline, 29-31

334

Dedrick, Claire, 199-200, 204, 228
Democratic party, 38, 74-77, 249,

251

Denton, Jan, 228
Desmond, Joseph, 241-242
Deukmejian, George, 192
Diablo Canyon power plant, 63, 80,

103-104, 128-129, 229-235
Dow Chemical, 125
Doyle, Bob, 277
Dreyfus, Barney, 64, 72, 89-94,

105-106, 112-114, 116, 119, 121-

122, 133-134, 142, 150
Duncan, Jim, 268, 280, 320
Duskin, Alvin, 156-159, 165

earthquake, Good Friday 1964

(Crescent City, CA) , 71, 73
East Bay Municipal Utility

District, 295, 298-299, 305
East Bay Regional Park District,
98, 199, 259-310, 318-319, 320,
326; Advisory Committee, 264-
266; budget and finance, 284-
287; Board, 260-261, 263-280,
283, 285, 287-289, 291, 302-305,
308, 318-319, 320; Measure AA,
305, 308. See also individual
parks.

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 35
Eissler, Fred, 80
Eldredge, Laurence E., 136
elections, initiative process in
California: Proposition 9
(1972), Clean Environment Act,
155; Proposition 9 (1974),
Political Reform Act of 1974,
166-167, 168, 177, 184;
Proposition 13 (1978), 217,
284; Proposition 15 (1976),
See Nuclear Safeguards Act;
Proposition 20 (1972), Coastal
Zone Conservation Act, 155;
Proposition 130 (1990), 194;
Proposition 138 (1990), 194.
Emerson, Ralph, 97-98
employment practices,

discrimination in, 319-326
Environmental Defense Fund, 92,
103-104

environmental law, 28-29, 54, 66,
104, 119-126, 139-142, 304-305

environmental protection, 156-157,
224, 228-229, 261-262, 264-265,
276; legal actions, 89-94,126-
129, 138-142; personal
motivations for, 30, 164, 168;
philosophy of, 11-13, 84-85,
101-103, 204-205. See also
Bodega Bay.

evidence, rules of, 243-244

Fair Employment Practices

Commission, 272
Fair Political Practices Act

(1974). See Proposition 9

(1974).
Fair Political Practices

Commission, 166-167, 171, 257
Fannin, Coleman, 244, 251
FBI, 82, 99-101
Federal Water Pollution Control

Act (1976), 194-199
Ferry Point, 265, 280-283
fire fighting, 15-17, 18-19, 206-

208, 209-211, 213-224, 229-235
Fischer, Michael, 317-319
Fisher, Fred, 312, 316
Flier, Richard, 253, 256
Flint, Phil, 50
Ford, Dan, 154
forest policy issues, 188-213,

310, 317-318
forest practice rules, 42, 190,

195-199
Forest Practices Act, 32, 189,

196, 227-229

Forrest, Loyd, 205, 206, 212-213
Free Speech Movement, 38-39
Freedom of Information Act, 61
freedom of speech, 133-136
Frick, Karen, 269, 270-274, 275
Friends of the Earth, 178-179, 184
Fullerton, Charles, 198, 200

Gaffney, Rose, 43, 94-96
Gagen, William, 250, 255, 257
Garin Regional Park, 278, 301
Garner, Jack, 281

335

Garry, Charles, 91, 93, 108, 112-

117, 133, 142-151
Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan and

Brotsky, 90-91, 107-108, 112-

152, 169-170, 200-201, 207-208,

240, 242

Geeseman, John, 179
General Electric, 55, 90, 167,

171-172

Georgiou, Byron, 237, 238
Gilbert, Jerry, 295
Gilliam, Harold, 50, 59-60
Gilligan, James, 27-28
Gion-Dietz doctrine, 129-130
Golden, Robert, 33
Goodwin, Jim, 92, 101
Graff, Tom, 103-104
Grand Accord, 194, 213
Green, Dorothy, 154, 156
Grendon, Alexander, 55-56, 86,

171-172

Grossman, Richard, 170
Guidotti, Win, 49, 84
Guillino, Josephine, 205-206

Hannigan, Thomas, 225

Harberts, Paul, 279

Harris, Don, 312, 316

Harris, Elihu, 289

Harwood, Bud and Virginia, 193

Hastings, John, 230-233

Hawaii, childhood in, 3-9

Hayes, Walt, 174, 179

Hayward Daily Review. 273-274

Heady, Harold, 214

Heafey, Edwin, Jr., 137

Hearst family, 97

Hedgpeth, Joel, 44, 49-51, 83, 96-

97

Heisler, Francis, 91-92
Henderson, Thelton, 319-320
Herring, Frances, 64
Hetch Hetchy reservoir, 88, 297
Hill, Doug and Mary Ann, 91-92
Billiard, David, 118-119
Billiard, Shelly Bursey, 118-119
Hoffman, John, 121
Hoover, J. Edgar, 82, 100
Hornbeck, Hulet, 277

House Unamerican Activities

Committee, 91, 114
Hubbard, Dick, 171-172
Humboldt Bay power plant, 63, 130-

133, 141-142
Button, Bobby, 107

Interstate Commerce Commission,
281-283

Jeans, Robert, 201

Jefferds, Mary, 263, 267, 271,

280, 283, 289, 291, 304
Johnson, Buey, 150, 189, 199-205,

211-217, 219
Jones, Jim, 143-151
Joyner, Ernie, 52-53

Kaiser Hospital, 254

Keene, Barry, 225

Kendall, Henry, 134, 153-156, 183,

185-186

Kennedy, Charles, 254-255
Kent, Jerry, 262, 275-276
Kent, Roger, 75-76
Kerson, Don, 92, 115
Kessel, Harlan, 260, 263-264, 267,

268, 271, 279-280, 283, 287,

289, 291, 304-305
King, Don, 238
Kline, J. Anthony, 237
Knecht, William, 45
Knox, John (Jack), 285
Koenig (geologist), 46
Kortum, Jean, 55, 59, 75-77, 89
Kortum, Karl, 42, 44, 45, 50-52,

57, 59, 65, 69
Kortum, Lucy, 51-52
Kortum, William, 51-52, 54, 89
Koupal, Edward, 155-161, 165, 175,

179
Kraszewski v. State Farm. 274,

276, 319-326

LaBelle, Mary Jane, 316

La Pointe, Alan, 307

labor law, 112, 114

labor unions, 218-223, 251, 293-

294, 303
Lafayette Reservoir, 299

336

Lake Chabot Park, 271, 294-296

land acquisition, 276-310

Landor, Walter, 313

Lane, Mark, 146-149

Lange, Suzie, 209, 210

Langley, Peter, 281

Lemmon, Jack, 131-132, 136, 138,

252, 255, 256

Leonard, Richard, 47-48, 83
Leopold, Aldo, 27, 97
Leopold, Starker, 22, 31, 96-97
Lesher, Dean, 246, 255-256
Levine, Larry, 201
Levine, Meldon, 225
Levy, David, 244-245
libel law, 133-136, 144-145
Livermore, Norman "Ike", 126-127,

204

Livermore, Putnam, 126
lumber industry, 190, 192-196,

223-224, 228-229
Luten, Dave, 292-293
Lynch, Eugene, 137

Maldonado, Ellen, 272-274
Martinez, city of, 280-283
McCarthy, Leo, 72
McDonald, James, 69, 70
Mclntyre, Joan, 55, 58, 154
McTernan, Frank, 91, 112, 114,

133, 142, 150
Meese, Edwin, 108
Merrill, Theodore, 242
Merrow, Sue, 311, 312, 319
Meyer, Bob, 115
Meyer, Steve, 286
Michigan, childhood and background

in, 1-2

Miller, Clem, 49
Minor, Dale, 171
Mitchell, Hazel. See Bonneke.
mitigation, 264-266, 281-283
Moorman, Jim, 121
Moran, Lewis, 198, 199-200, 205,

222

Morrison & Foerster, 322
Morrison, Jack, 76
Morrissey, John C., 45
Moss, Larry, 311

Mott, William Penn, 2, 261, 262,

266, 277, 279, 289, 303
Moyal, Maurice, 244-245
Muldoon, James B., 51
Murphy, Turk, 67

NAACP, Hayward, California, 264

Nader, Ralph, 154, 179, 184

National Environmental Policy Act,
66

National Lawyers' Guild, 91, 106-
108

National Park Service, 2-4

NBC (National Broadcasting
Corporation), 130-137

Neal, Kathy, 289

Neilands, John B. (Joe), 3, 50,
60-61, 87-89, 92

Nejedly, John, 138, 242, 251-252,
256, 285

New Deal, 2-3, 10

Newhall, Scott, 57

Newman, Marsh and Furtado, 114

Newsom, William A. , 237

Newton, Huey, 112, 116-117, 142

Nixon administration, 132

North Coast Regional Water Quality
Control Board, 195, 223

Nothenberg, Rudy, 297-298

nuclear engineering, 52, 171-172

nuclear power, attitudes toward,
47-48, 74-80, 101-103, 163-165,
171-172, 178-179, 184-188, 201-
202, 229; movement against, 12,
42-82, 119-129, 131-136, 141,
153-156, 163-168, 171-172, 178-
188, 201-202, 230-233; safety
of, 47-48, 51, 54-55, 74-75,
78-80, 97-98, 131-133, 164-165,
178-188; waste management, 78-
79, 181. See also Bodega Bay
and Nuclear Safeguards Act.

nuclear power plants, 66, 78-79,
119-120, 153-154. See also
specific power plants.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
142, 152, 234

Nuclear Safeguards Act, 1976, 129,
134, 152-188, 201, 236.

nuclear weapons, 55

337

O'Brian, Pat, 269
Oakland Museum, 286
Oakland Tribune. 273
Oakland Zoo, 289-290
Ohlone Park, 297-298
Owen, Bob, 294, 296

Pacific Gas & Electric Company,

37, 38, 41-45, 46-48, 50, 58,

60-61, 62-66, 68, 70-77, 83-84,

86-89, 97-98, 99-100, 102-104,

105, 119-129, 130-138, 141-142,

229-235, 241, 254-255
Packwood, Robert, 310
Parkinson, Thomas, 22
Parrott, Joel, 289-290
Patsey, Richard, 31, 239-240, 242,

244

Paulus, Robert, 206
Pearl Harbor, 1941, 4-6, 11
Peavey, Michael, 185
People's Lobby, 157-159
People's Park, 108-111, 113
People's Temple, 142-149, 151
Pesonen, Bart (brother), 4-9, 11,

13, 26

Pesonen, Dan (cousin), 121
Pesonen, Eleanor Barton (mother),

1, 3-11, 13, 25-26, 38
Pesonen, Everett (father), 1-13,

14-15, 25-26, 36-37, 38, 40
Pesonen, Kyle (son), 118
Peterson, Kay, 271, 277, 280, 283,

303

Pleasanton Ridge, 268, 279, 285
Point Arena nuclear power plant,

105, 119-129, 152-153
Point Reyes National Seashore, 59,

99-101
political philosophy, new left,

38-40
political philosophy, old left,

91-94, 109, 112-116, 146, 150
Pollack, Stewart, 139
Presley, Robert, 225
Price-Anderson Act, 159, 181
Project Survival, 173, 179, 183
Public Employees Retirement Act,

220

Radke, Ted, 268, 280, 287
Raker Act, 88

Rancho Seco power plant, 120-121,

125-126
Rathbun, Amelia and Harry, 163,

164, 173-175
Reagan, Ronald, 108-109, 155, 192,

244, 281

Reclamation Act, 88
Redwood National Park, 189-192,

198

Reinhardt, Stephen, 167-168
renewable resources, 204, 211-213,

217

revenue bonds, 284, 286-287
Reynoso, Cruz, 240-241
Richardson, H.L., 252
Richmond, California, city of,

306-307

Rogers, Sam, 60-61, 89
Rosenthal, Cecile, 193
Rudden, Cliff, 33
Ruebel, Marion and Ray, 43, 50,

70

Russo, Ron, 300
Ryan, Leo, 146-147

Sacramento Junior College, 14, 18
Sacramento Municipal Utility

District, 120-121
Saint -Amand, Pierre, 58-59, 70-71,

102, 122

San Andreas Fault, 59, 61, 68, 122
San Francisco Water Department,

296-299

San Pablo Reservoir, 299
San Onofre power plant, 156
Santa Fe, New Mexico, childhood

in, 2-4

Santa Fe Pacific Railway, 280-283
Saperstein, Guy, 273, 274, 276,

319-320, 322, 324-325
Sargent, Tony, 45, 50
Save San Francisco Bay

Association, 68, 84-85
Save the Redwoods League, 191
Schuler, Bill, 115
Seaborg, Glenn T. , 38, 97-99
seismic safety, 46-48, 58-62, 68-

69, 73-74, 122-126, 142, 229
Shea, Kevin, 262
Shearer, Julie, 58, 60-61, 63, 71,

83, 87, 101, 106, 122, 146, 169,

338

173-175, 185-186, 235, 238-239,

254, 256

Sher, Byron, 225
Sherwin, Ray, 126-127
Sherwood, Don, 67-68
Siegel, Dan, 108-111, 113
Sierra Club, 28-29, 31-33, 34-35,

42-48, 52, 63, 80-81, 83, 85,

102-104, 119, 121-122, 126-129,

179, 184, 188, 191, 193, 310-319
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund,

92, 121-126, 129-130, 310-319
Silva, Julio, 15-17
Sloan, Doris, 50, 57, 85-86, 89,

92

Smith, Charlie, 88-89
Southern Pacific Railroad, 280-283
Speier, Jacqueline, 146-147
Spohn, Richard, 154, 156, 160, 179
State Farm Insurance Company, 319-

326

Stegner, Wallace, 27-29
Stender, Fay, 112-113
Sterns, Jerry, 258-260
Stolz, Preble, 101
Stone, Edward C., 22
Strube, Hal, 63-65, 75
Sunol Regional Park, 265, 296-298
Sutherland, Rick, 311-313, 315-

316, 318

Tilden Park, 263, 277, 301, 303-

304

Tocher, Don, 70
Traynor, Mike, 315-316
Trobitz, Henry, 192-193, 224
Trudeau, Richard C., 260-262, 264-

266, 277, 287, 293, 306
Truehaft, Bob, 109, 114
Truehaft, Walker and Bernstein,

114

Udall, Stewart, 29, 59-60, 65-66,

73-74, 76
Uniform Determinate Sentencing

Act, 247-248
Union of Concerned Scientists,

134, 153-154

United Nations, Food and

Agriculture Organization, 34-37,

46, 48, 49
United States Army, 15, 22-23, 35-

36
United States Bureau of

Reclamation, 9-12, 40-41
United States Congress. See House

UnAmerican Activities Committee.
United States Department of

Interior, 59-60, 65-66, 99, 124,

212
United States Department of

Justice, 117-119
United States Forest Service, 15-

17, 25, 192; regulations, 29
United States Geological Survey,

59, 65-66, 71-73, 123-124
University of California,

Berkeley, 38-39, 50, 84; Boalt

Hall, 101, 105-108; School of

Forestry, 14, 19-26, 34, 60, 97
University of California, Lawrence

Livermore Laboratory, 38, 45
University of California, proposed

marine biology station at

Bodega Bay, 96-99
University of California,

Radiation Laboratory, 38
University of California, San

Francisco, expansion of, 138-139
University of California,

Wildlands Research Center, 25-29
Unruh, Jesse, 252

Valentine, Paul, 168, 174
Varanini, Emilio E., Ill, 180
Vaux, Henry, 20-22, 29, 31, 34,

39, 60, 188-189, 192-194, 196,

198-199, 212, 221
Vietnam conflict, 107, 132

Wadell, Tom, 230, 233-234
Waegell family, 15, 35-36
Wahrhaftig, Clyde, 193
Waldie, Jerome, 76
Walker, J. Samuel, 58-59, 65-66,

74, 82, 99, 152-153
Wallace, Henry, 38
Warass, Harold, 203-204, 206

339

Warren, Charles, 156, 179-183
Wasco power plant, 201-202
water issues, 11-13, 40-41, 194-

199, 223, 296-299, 306
Water Resources Control Board, 195
Watson, Fran, 251, 257
Watters, Lu, 67-68
Watters, Pat, 67
Wayburn, Edgar, 47, 80-81, 104,

317-318
Wellock, Thomas, 38, 52, 78-79,

82, 83, 94, 100
Wheelwright, George, 72
Widener, Don, 130-138, 139, 144,

231, 254-255, 256
Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, 306-

307

wilderness, 27-29, 223
Wilderness Act, 28-29
"Wilderness Letter," (Wallace

Stegner), 28-29, 32
Wiley, Joe, 294
Willy, Zach, 103-104
Wilson, Pete, 194
Wilson, Richard, 193-194
World War II, childhood

experiences of, 4-9, 11
Wyman, Dave, 281

Yank, Ronald, 234

Z'berg-Nejedly Act. See Forest

Practices Act.
Zen Center, 184-187
Zinoni, 129-130
Zirpoli, Alfonso, 118-119
Zivnuska, John, 21-22, 34, 60, 188

ANN LAGE

B.A., and M.A. , in History, University of
California, Berkeley.

Postgraduate studies, University of
California, Berkeley, American history and
education.

Chairman, Sierra Club History Committee, 1978-1986;
oral history coordinator, 1974-present; Chairman,
Sierra Club Library Committee, 1993-present.

Interviewer/Editor, Regional Oral History
Office, in the fields of natural resources
and the environment, university history,
California political history, 1976-present.

Principal Editor, assistant office head, Regional
Oral History Office, 1994-present.

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