Audio
Colonel John Kern Part 2
Transcript
Conklin: (007) We've begun discussing my next question, under Bill Whalen, the first Superintendent - that's spelled W-h-a-l-e-n - what were your first projects and communications? You know, you've just told me that you helped set up their office, so what was the next step?
Kern: (011) Well, Bill, basically, had nothing to work with. He had a GSA-issued car, and that was about it. And he had no way to maintain it; we didn't have any Military Police - correction: We didn't have any National Park police, and so the Military Police covered initially until the park police contingent was sent in from Washington, D.C. And as the Park Service gradually took over buildings, they had no capability to maintain them; they had no shop of any significance, and the like. And the Army had a... in Pier One in Fort Mason, the Army had its own maintenance facility there that took care of facilities at Oakland Army Base, and also Fort Mason itself. And, at my suggestion, which was a little bit difference than anything that had been done before, I suggested rather than the Park Service creating a brand new maintenance shop and looking for a place and money to buy tools and all the rest, that they just sort of move in with us and share it. And it was the first time, probably, in history where an Army maintenance facility became also a National Park maintenance facility. Later, we were able to move the Army unit out, and leave behind 100 percent of the tools, the equipment, the shop, the keymaking equipment - everything - so that when the National Park Service started, they had everything in place to operate. Pier One also had a unique facility on the end of it. During the early part of the Korean War, the General Services Administration had leased to the Maritime Administration a portion of Pier One. And the terms of the lease were that they had the right to occupy and use the end of the Pier for the war and a reasonable period thereafter. And that was rather nebulous in real estate terms. And one of the transfers that I was able to affect...Bill - we transferred all the lower part of Fort Mason and the middle part; in fact, we transferred the entire of Fort Mason to the National Park Service with continued use and occupancy of the Army of the Officers Club, the NCO Club, a Teen Club, and 43 sets of quarters, portions of Building 201 in what is...was our former telephone exchange, which is now your National Police Headquarters. So, those buildings were still Army buildings, and the telephone exchange and the rest were still active; but as the land, theoretically, was transferred, except for this end of Pier One, because it belonged to a different Federal agency. And with...at my suggestion, Bill and I went over one day to the Maritime Administration, and we asked to speak to the senior administrator. And he couldn't understand why a Park Superintendent and an Army Engineer were there to visit with him. And I said, "We just came to give him official notice." And he said, "What kind of notice?" And I said, "I want to tell you that time is up." And he was dumbstruck, because we're now in the year 1973, early '73, and of course, the Vietnamese [sic] War had ended many years earlier, and they were very carefully ensconced in the end of Pier One and had no intention of leaving. And he immediately sent for his staff legal people, and they came in and I said to them that their lease from GSA was in effect transferred to the ownership of the National Park Service and the U.S. Army, and that we were there to give him official notice. And finally, he complained, he said they had nowhere else to go. And I said, "Well, you don't have to move. We just want to transfer the land, and you can become a tenant of the Park Service." And so, for the first time in history, we're using a Department of Defense transfer document - we transferred a Maritime Administration facility, brokered by the General Services Administration to the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. And to the best of my knowledge, they stayed there as long as they wanted to stay there; and I don't know if they're yet to this day, but I think it's unique that they finally came in and signed off on it, and Bill and I walked out of there with a smile on our face that we had affected a transfer in a rather unusual - but a certainly effective - way!
Conklin: (066) Great! Did you, as representative of the Department of the Army, have, or know of, any input or influence the Department of the Army had on the 1980 General Management Plan? How involved were you in that Plan?
Kern: (070) I attended all of the meetings, and if I could digress here for a moment to say when Bill...the creation of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area occurred during a Republican administration, but that the bill was originally authored and sponsored by the two local Congressmen - Phil Burton, a Democrat, and Bill Maillard, a Republican. Burton obviously the more aggressive and more active of the two, but the two of them together had co-authored the legislation. And it was during the period when President Nixon, looking for a way to gain public popularity, had come up with his Legacy of Parks. So, the initial Secretary of the Interior, whom I believe was Rogers Morton from...at the time, was obviously wanting to get credit for the Park and the like; and he got to appoint certain members to what became the Citizens Advisory Commission. The Sierra Club and other local... People for a Golden Gate National Recreation Area, with Ed Wayburn and Amy Meyer as co-chairs, were very influential in trying to stuff the council with people of their thinking and leaning, and were primarily on the Democratic side of the house. And Bill Whalen explained to me that he was in this dilemma that he couldn't appoint any one of them as Chair without objections from the other side. And I suggested to him that I knew of a person whom I had worked for, who was my boss as the District Engineer in San Francisco, who was a very brilliant, affable, common sense-type guy who knew how to conduct public meetings and the like. And I made arrangements for Bill Whalen to be introduced to Frank Boerger.
Conklin: (095) Spell that please.
Kern: (095) Boerger is B-o-e-r-g-e-r. And Frank Boerger was a colonel, graduated Number One in his class from the military academy; he had a brother that was a general in the Corps of Engineers, also. And Frank was probably one of the finest, most logical, solid citizens that I had ever known or met. And Bill later told me that the best thing that I ever did for the National Park Service was to get Frank Boerger. And Frank was brought in as an outsider who had no political involvement, was on neither side of the fence, and was able to take over as Chairman of the Advisory Commission and ran it for at least the next sixteen or seventeen years. And...until his death. And we sorely miss Frank, but he was a wonderful contribution to the Park, and I'm proud to have been able to nominate him.
Conklin: (106) In terms of the General Management Plan, did the Army have an agenda that they wanted to get through? By 1980, was the Army pretty much out of the land and it was a park planning effort at that point?
Kern: (109) In 1980, the Presidio had no intentions of closing. It was scheduled to be here forever. The Army had voluntarily given up the rifle range at Fort Barry, because every time we fired we had to close Councilman Road and other places, and people couldn't... the bird watchers and people couldn't get up there and visit, so we just said... and I also had another job as a Commander of Camp Parks over near Pleasanton. And so, the Army gradually moved their training facilities over to Camp Parks and they're still there to this day. But the... incidentally, Camp Parks was also surplus and excess to the Army's needs at one time, and I saw the need for it, and was able to arrange to have it withdrawn from excess. And so, now it's basically used to support the reservists and the National Guard in the Northern California Area. But, as it became apparent, when the Nike closed down and the rifle range and military training would interfere with Park users, the Army voluntarily vacated what I would call the Headlands area. The legislation proposing the GGNRA also included two areas of the Presidio that were to be irrevocably permitted for Park Service use, but to remain under Army ownership; and those were approximately 45 acres in the vicinity of Crissy Field and approximately 100 acres which is now the ocean side of the Presidio, which we refer to as Ocean Beach. The legislation really intended for 17 acres of firm land above the high tide lines and 23 acres of submerged lands and Crissy Field; and approximately 45 acres of fast land, the beach itself, and 55 acres of submerged lands. I looked at these and felt that they were inappropriate. And, with Bill Whalen's concurrence, we suggested that we give a different configuration, but one which that give the entire beach areas of both areas. And instead of 17 acres of fast lands, we transferred, or permitted, 44.7 acres, which was the original Crissy Field area and approximately 103 acres of fast lands which became everything west of the highway over in the Ocean Beach side, to the Park Service. Plus some 389 acres of submerged lands that the Army held title to from the State of California. So, in effect, they got much, much greater area, but it gave the Park Service those portions of the Presidio to use and to manage that really were applicable for visitation. At the same time, the remainder of the Presidio was an open post and remained open to the public and had great amount of visitation to buildings such as the one we're in now, the Army Museum, and many hiking trails. We had a Boy Scout camp, and many, many of the public came and walked through. And it was important to both the Park Service and to the Army that the Presidio remain open to the public so long as the military were not interfered with in the accomplishment of their missions.
Conklin: (158) What was your plan for the Lanhan - is that spelled L-a-n-h-a-n - Housing in the Headlands?
Kern: (159) Lanham, L-a-n-h-a-m. When the Congress approves money for military construction based on the author of the legislation, they name it, and the particular author of that was the Lanham Act, which created housing of... many years back. And so, that Lanham Act housing here, and also some at Hamilton Air Force Base, which has become turned over recently for civilian use. But we had quite a few sets of Lanham Act housing, and...substandard by today's rules, but certainly more than adequate; with hardwood floors and the like, equipped with stoves, refrigerators, and the like, over in the vicinity of Fort Barry, near the rifle range. And I made arrangements with the Army to transfer those buildings complete; since we no longer had a need for them, we offered to transfer them complete to the National Park Service so that their young rangers and their young techs and people that were coming... being employed, but had relatively low salaries would have a place to live, and the like. Regrettably, the Park Service did not want them, and asked us, and a contract was executed, in which they were demolished and hauled off. So, we had those buildings. Also, General Abrams had given me permission to transfer two of those fine brick quarters in the Loop in Fort Mason to the National Park Service as a gesture of courtesy to the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent, so that they might occupy the quarters directly across from their headquarters. Bill Whalen also had a bad experience in Yosemite when visitors and the public stuck their nose in the back of his house, and indicated that he personally didn't want to live in the Park, and gracefully declined the offer. And those houses are still occupied by the Army today.
Conklin: (188) Thank you. Alcatraz, as a former military post, you told me, required demilitarization before it could be transferred off the U.S. Army books. And what did this entail? And please include the Alcatraz flag pole story.
Kern: (193) Well, the...as a standard rule, whenever the military vacates a property, they... we go through a process known as "demilitarization" and basically, you remove any ammunition, you remove anything that would be hazardous to the general public, and you remove anything that is of a salvage or a reusable value to the Army itself, to be transferred to other post camps or stations. Alcatraz had long since ceased to be an Army post, but there was no way to get to it or back from it. And having previously served in the San Francisco District, I had access to some of their small survey boats and the like, and the first trip to Alcatraz on which I escorted Bill Whalen out there, he, for the first time, found the ruins that had been left there at the end of the Indian occupation several years previous. Contrary to what people may think, that was not a peaceful occupants and that the Indian themselves stripped much of the copper wire and many of the things out and were selling them in order to raise funds in order to subsist. In fact, on Thanksgiving one year while the Indians occupied the Island, there were so many boats from San Francisco that went out there as a token, a gesture of good will; people donated turkeys to the Indians on Alcatraz as sort of a reverse of the first Thanksgiving. In fact, the Indians had so many turkeys, they had a big game seeing who could shotput the turkeys the furthest from the Rock; they had so many more than they could eat, and they were actually throwing them off into the water. But, this preceded, of course, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area time. The public...the Army was also accused of taking water out and sustaining the Indians while they were there. There was an Army barge that did it, but it was from Oakland Army Base; but I was down at the San Francisco District and caught the flak from the press. But, one our first trip to Alcatraz with Bill Whalen and the rest, they were overwhelmed at the amount of debris and garbage and trash that was there, and there were all kinds of problems of getting to and from and getting the Island more active. So, my role, basically, was to help him get out there, get access to the facilities; and then I went around with him and helped determine which of the guard towers and water tanks and things were actually in hazardous conditions and had to be removed before the public safety could be assessed. And so, our original trip out there was basically a cleanup. And then, because of the popularity of Alcatraz and the public's desire to get out there, the Park Service started conducting tours, and they had rangers and other docents out there escorting people around. And Bill Whalen planned a large dedication, the transfer; and both Congressmen Maillard and Burton were both invited, along with several other Congressional representatives, everyone from the Sierra Club, and all of the other people who were anxious to... the mayors, and all of the local politicians - everybody was there. And Bill planned it to a gnat's eyelash. He had a multi-cultural honor guard; he had a bugler there; and he planned the whole thing up to the raising of the flags. And he had a representative of both the native Americans and the African Americans and others, and the Hispanics, and the caucasians - everyone was there represented in the honor guard and the like. And I casually looked around and said, "Bill, I don't quarrel with any of your plans, but where do you plan to raise the flag? There's no flagpole!" And he looked - and this was only two or three days before the actual ceremony, all of which had been planned in great detail - and there was a...just an aura of panic that existed. So, that night, with a group of some Army volunteers, we got a large lowboy tractor trailer from the Army motor pool and we made a clandestine trip up to an old, abandoned Nike site outside of Travis Airforce Base, and somehow or other a flagpole disappeared up there, and we got it back. And the next day, with a work boat, we got it out to Alcatraz and we hastily erected a flagpole there. And it even had the old brass ball sitting on the top. And I had taken that to my wife, who dutifully tried to polish it for six straight hours to make it shine. And Bill Whalen and I, we actually engraved in the top of that he and I had sat here on the date of the dedication, regrettably, during a storm. And the next couple of years, the ball was blown off the Island, so it's been lost; but to me, that was a typical example of raising a flag on a pole that didn't exist and we were able to cover it!
Conklin: (271) Thank you - I love that story! What inter-agency negotiations were required for the U.S. Park Police and local law enforcement? And in the telling of this, could you include the safe house story for the Anthony Harris case in the Headlands?
Kern: (276) Well, the National Park Police came in and I was fortunate to be present with them when we met with the San Francisco Police and also the Sheriff in Marin County. And along the way, since they had jurisdiction on both sides, the National Park Police ended up with four jurisdictions: they had their normal Park jurisdiction; they were deputized U.S. Marshals; they were deputized Marin County Sheriffs; and they were deputized San Francisco Police, so that because of the conflicting boundary lines and the uncertainty when somebody had violated a law - a speeding ticket, or a parking violation, or even a more serious crime - we had to be sure that the police who were involved in the arrest had authority. So, I worked coordination between the Military Police and the Park Police so that if someone were picked up and if it were a military member, the Military Police just took jurisdiction and the matter was settled through their system. Likewise, if it was a civilian and they were retained by the Military Police, we somehow summoned the Park Police there and we were able to make a joint arrest, and therefore make sure that the properties were protected. But this worked well. We also arranged to have the Park Police act as Deputy U.S. Sheriffs from Marin County and San Francisco so that they could cross the Bridge; and we were able to get Bridge permits for them which saved the Park Service a great deal of money out of a budget that was very, very small when they first started. Along the way, one day I was subpoenaed to the Park Service office on a rather hurry-up basis. And I was informed that - by Bill Whalen - that... or correction: It may have been Jerry Schoeber at the time - Bill Whalen's successor.
Conklin: (309) S-c-h-o-e-b-e-r, Schoeber?
Kern: (310) Schoeber, yes, that's correct.
Conklin: (310) I think so.
Kern: (311) So, they said that they had received a call from Washington, D.C., and I was asked to go to a certain telephone and await a call. And I did this, and it turned out it came from the U.S. Attorney General's Office and one of the high officials in that office. And they explained to me that San Francisco was suffering from a rash of crimes in which a rather - shall we say - rightwing group of Muslims, Black Muslims, had decided that they wanted to perpetrate the genocide of the white race, and they were committing some type - many types - of atrocious crimes and torturing people and killing women in front of their husbands and vice versa and the like. And they - the San Francisco Police Department - was going wild to try to suppress this Black Muslim group. These became known as the Zebra Murders. And the Zebra Murder cases were quite famous all over the state. One of the Zebra members - or one of the members of this group - was captured, and his name was Anthony Harris. And the San Francisco Police Department had no place to keep him. So, they went to the U.S. Marshal Service and asked them to provide protective service for him, since there was obviously a long list of people who wanted to snub him out before he could spill his guts to the police. The U.S. Marshal Service had nowhere to go; and through their channels of the Park Police, being deputized U.S. Marshals, came to them and asked them. And, of course, the Park Service was in its infancy and had little in the way of facilities, and that's why I was asked to act as the liaison between. And so we took Building 942 over in Fort Barry, which was a two-story house sitting in the midst of some larger buildings, off by itself. And the U.S. Army... with the permission of the Commanding General of Sixth Army of the time, I was able to outfit it with furniture and equipment, and this particular prisoner, Anthony Harris, was moved in there as a safe house. He later escaped from the house while the marshals were watching the color television set that I was also asked to provide. And he escaped from an upstairs window. And the Park Police didn't tell me about it for three days. And then they brought in some... they were apparently conducting a rather extensive investigation, and they came into my office and said that they had to talk to me, that something tragic had happened and they were sure that Anthony Harris had killed his common law wife and their infant child, and that he was on the loose. And they wanted me to help them go over and search the terrain. And I said, "Well, who else knows about this?" And, of course, no one was allowed to know, nobody in the Army. The Military Police only knew that there was a house over there that if I called for assistance or help they were to respond to my call. The Park Police, with the exception of the commander and one or two of his immediate subordinates, and the Superintendent of the Park were the only Park people that knew about this operation. So, they were very embarrassed that the marshals had lost their prisoner. That very week, the centerfold of the local newspaper had a story on the U.S. Marshals Service in which they had never lost a prisoner, and they had actually lost one three days earlier, but the word hadn't gotten out. But the U.S. Marshals were sure that Anthony Harris was loose in the area; and I asked them if they had coordinated with the Military Police or had discussed this. And of course, the word was mum, nobody was allowed to speak, and so, nothing. So, I went down to the Park - excuse me, to the Military Police - and asked to review their log, specifically of the night in which the event occurred. It turned out that Anthony Harris, as bad as he was, and later accused of some four or five murders, but he was a very loving parent for his infant son, and had no intentions of killing off his common law wife. They had actually walked from the safe house in Fort Barry to the tunnel leading between east and west Fort Baker. And just before they got to the tunnel, they had to stop to change the baby's diaper. And they stopped in front of one of the Army quarters over there, and under a pine tree, changed the baby's diaper, and he was observant enough to note the name and the quarters number. He later walked, and was attempting to walk through the tunnel, which was off limits to pedestrians. A Military Police patrol coming through the tunnel at the time found them, stopped them, put them in the Military Police vehicle and took them back to the other side and radioed back to the Military Police and said they had just picked up two males and a female, and wanted to know what to do with them. And the... Anthony Harris had given them the very plausible story that he was visiting the sergeant and his wife who lived in quarters number so-and-so, and that unfortunately, they had a terrible fight; and that they had gotten up and each gone off in their own car and left he and his wife and the infant there - he had no transportation, and the like. And the Military Police sergeant at the desk authorized him, authorized the patrol, to bring him back either to the Golden Gate Bridge bus stop, or bring him back to the Military Police Station, where they would call a taxi for him. He elected the latter; and so they loaded his suitcase, which he also was carrying with the baby's paraphernalia, and he and his common law wife into the Military Police vehicle, and brought 'em back to Military Police Station. Military policemen even helped them out and carried the suitcases and things for 'em. They had called a cab for him; they had ascertained that he had a hundred dollars in his pocket; and they had even logged in the address that he was heading to over in Oakland for the cab. And when I brought all this information back to a rather large group of red-faced U.S. Marshals and told them exactly where he had gone, and that his reason for breaking away was to take the child back for a visit with the pediatrician; and that they later were able to trace him to Los Angeles, and from there, two San Francisco policemen went down and re-arrested him in the streets of Los Angeles, and brought him back. The Park Service was again asked to provide an alternate safe house, and the San Francisco police this time were going to occupy Hill 88 and set up bunkers with machine guns and all the rest; and at my suggestion - and I'm sure, with the concurrence of the Park officials - we said not only "No" but "Hell, no!" and Anthony Harris was housed down at the San Francisco Police Academy's rifle range near Lake Merced, and we had nothing further to do with him.
Conklin: (457) In the two minutes that we have left, can you reflect on the successes and shortcomings of the transition from post to park, within the GGNRA, when the Park was first established? Is there anything that you wished had turned out differently?
Kern: (465) Well, first of all, I didn't personally want to see the Presidio ever close as a military post. And I think most of the Park people agreed with me that we needed to do was to convert it to a common use by the public. And I had tried very hard to transfer those portions of the Presidio that were more amenable to Park Service - along the beaches, and along the open space - and that we would continue to occupy the rest of the post, and it could be back-filled with administrative units, not to interfere with the public's use. The Army has since chosen to do otherwise, and I think they have dumped a whale on a minnow. They have dumped a rather large piece of land, very complicated, with many buildings, on a rather limited Park structure. And fortunately, recently, legislation has been passed to permit the creation of a foundation to be able to run it. Otherwise, the National Park Service could not handle the Presidio and keep it up. I was distressed to see the buildings and the grounds start to deteriorate rather dramatically, and many people came to me and said, "They'll just let it go to ruin - we should never have given up the Presidio, it was too beautiful." So, I feel that it will be saved; it's going to take time. The Presidio is obviously going to go down in quality before it comes back up in quality.
Description
Col. John Kern discusses his military career and how he was involved as the main liaison between the Army and the National Parks Service in the transfer with Sara Conklin of the National Park Service in 1995
Copyright and Usage Info