Bill O'Brien's Long Journey On The A.T.

Bill O'Brien became the new President of the A.T Museum earlier this year. But, Bill's association with the Trail and the Museum goes back many decades. Bill talks about first learning about the Trail, his two thru-hikes, the many Trail icons he has met over the years and his plans for the Museum.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

This is the Trail of History, a podcast of the Appalachian Trail. The Trail of History tells the stories of the Appalachian Trail. It is the production of the Appalachian Trail Museum. The museum, located in South Central Pennsylvania, near the 18th midpoint, tells the stories of the founding, construction, preservation, maintenance, protection, and enjoyment of the trail since its creation. I am joined by Bill O'Brien. Bill is a uh longtime volunteer with the Appalachian Trail in various aspects, and we're going to get into that, and longtime volunteer with the Appalachian Trail Museum. And uh earlier this year he became the uh president of the Appalachian Trail Museum. Bill, uh, welcome to the podcast. Uh, when did you first learn about the Appalachian Trail?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Well, I was uh in Scouts uh during my teenage years. Uh, you know, I stayed in it long enough to become an Eagle Scout. But during that time, I remember as a kid, somehow or other, my older brother, who was also in Scouts, and I received this uh book about campcraft, and it had beautiful illustrations that made it all look so organized and clean. Um little did we know, but um they devoted a page to the different kinds of hiking, and so there was day hiking, overnight camping, and long distance hiking, and I remember only later when I ran across that book, um that it actually for that chapter on our little paragraph about long-distance hiking, it mentioned the Appalachian Trail. I think that was the first time I it was ever entered into my mind, even though during my scouting years, I spent a week in summer camp in a town called Goshen, Connecticut. That was back in the 1970s, and at the time, the AT ran right along right by this scout reservation. They've since relocated it farther west because the quality of the water was pretty bad with a lot of farms there. Uh, but we went on an orienteering course one day that week, and the flag that we had to find based on coordinates was actually hidden under a tree that had a white blaze on it. And I didn't realize it, and they never mentioned this uh during the uh that day's events, but it was the AT. And I didn't didn't put two and two together till till years later. And I looked at the map, and sure enough, it was close enough to this reservation that uh it just had to be the Appalachian Trail. So um, flash forward a few years, I was um down in Asheville, North Carolina for a wedding for a college friend of mine. This was in 1986, so that's four years ago this year. The wedding was on a Friday night, and I had all the rest of the weekend to hang around, and I figured I would just drive into the Smokies on Saturday, which I did, and I didn't know anything much about the Smokies, I just saw what I saw on the map. I pulled into this parking area to go up to the observation tower on Klingman's Dome, which has since been you know renamed, and um I had no idea that uh I was actually uh walking on the Appalachian Trail once I came up that approach trail. Went up to the observation tower, didn't get my view as typical uh uh every time I've been there since, because it was just hazed in. Came back down. This is in April of 86, and I saw this hiker coming up the trail towards me as I was heading back to that approach trail. He was covered in plastic, you know, garbage bags covering his pack, wearing reindeer. Uh uh had a little bit of a beard, and he was miserable. It was a big pack, too. And I, you know, I'd been I had done some backpacking before, not just through scouts, but during college and so forth. So I I kind of stepped aside and uh uh said hello to him as he was approaching, and I said, uh uh where are you headed? And he said, Maine. He never stopped, he just kept kept grunting and walking. I said, Wow, Maine, where'd you start from? Georgia. And that was it. He was already past me on his way, and I I said, Oh, don't miss that uh observation tower. He never answered me, and I doubt he went up there. But um at dawn on me, I looked at the sign finally that was nearby, and it was the Apple Asian Trail. So that was like the seed for possibly doing that. Um and uh again, a few years later, I went uh decided to go to graduate school in New York City. And as part of my planning for that, it was only a uh a nine-month program. It's pretty condensed. You you're in and out of there with a master's degree in no time, it seems. But as part of that, I figured since I've taken what amounted to a sabbatical from work, I was working at a newspaper. I graduated from undergrad with a degree in journalism, and this was uh journalism um the School of Journalism at Columbia. I figured I would follow up a year in New York City with, you know, a half a year on Appalachian Trail. So that's when I started really seriously planning for a through hike, and that was uh I showed up in '88 in New York City. So I was gonna hit the trail in in 1989 as a southbounder since I wasn't gonna be starting right away uh because of uh graduation. And during the course of that year, uh one of my best friends in uh in grad school, it turned out his brother had through hike the AT a couple years earlier and was coming to New York to visit his brother. So he and I sat down together at the um school library there, and he gave me a lot of information, tips, and so forth. He pulled out this really ragged, beaten-up little pam uh booklet, and it was the data book, and he told me that's all I needed to to go out and hike the AT. And he pointed out all the little codes and messages and stuff that you could find in there, like water locations and the shelters, of course. Of course, I when I finally came to it, I I had all the maps that I could get a hold of and uh didn't just rely on a data book. But um, that's what I did. I I hit the trail as a southbounder, um, you know, climbing up Mount Katarin, and on the way up, of course, as a southbounder, you're not even technically on your through hike yet. On the way up, I met this older gentleman who in talking with him, um I learned that he had been plugging away at the AT for something like 10 years, always picking up where he left off his last hike. So he was a section hiker. And here he was on the final leg of this 10-year journey. He was kind of taciturn. He didn't he didn't initiate any questions or or conversation. It was me asking him a lot of questions. And when it finally dawned on me what was happening, uh, I decided to uh fall back and uh throw a spring. I pretended I had a relace my boots or something, and I let him go, you know, to let him go ahead and finish on top, you know, by himself without me pestering him. And it was really uh an eye-opening experience because here I was, had the audacity to call myself a through hiker or think of myself as a through hiker, and I technically hadn't yet stepped a foot southbound on the AT. And uh it gave me a whole real great appreciation for section hikers, too. Uh to me, ever since then I felt that they have it all over through hikers because of all the um readjustments they have to make every time they go back out there. It's farther away each time, depending on where they're located. Uh, they have to take time off constantly, that's using up vacation time or whatever. So um I I I was really hooked on to the culture uh even before I hit the summit of Katahdin. Unfortunately, as I was heading south into the wilderness, I really wasn't paying attention where I was going because I was looking around everywhere and had just seen a deer, and I fell into a uh bit of a hole and twisted my foot so badly, I had to limp back to A-Ball Bridge, um where I knew it turned out the owners of that uh store were originally from the town next door to me in Connecticut, so they kind of took an interest in me uh the first time I met them that day before. I limped back in literally the next day, and uh they let me stay for free at the little campground there. And he came by that night. He told me not to take the boot off, um, to leave it on there to help support and uh kind of restrict the uh any possible swelling. He came by that night to my tent and he said, Okay, Bill, let's let's take a look at the foot. I took the boot off, and my foot was black. So and I knew I wasn't gonna be able to hike uh to Georgia that that next day. He he drove me to the bus station the next morning. I limped home, my tail between my legs, uh, but it only took a month off for my foot to come back. And during that time, my father uh he he carved me uh uh a walking stick, which I didn't have to begin with. Uh trucking poles were were very rare back in 1989, but I now had um a handmade wooden walking stick uh to help me uh along. And he and my brother drove me back up to A-Ball Bridge, and uh I set off the next morning uh heading south. And uh it was during that uh wilderness trek that I ran into a flip-flop hiker, and he kind I was still kind of limping around. So he amended my trail name, which I started out as just uh rice, excuse me, uh, for Rice O'Brien, because that was a dish on a menu at a winter banquet in Scouts. And I resurrected the name Rice in graduate school because we had a softball team, Intramural softball team, where our only rule was we had to go by a nickname. And uh and one of my best friends, the one whose brother hiked the AT, it turned out his childhood nickname was Beans. So we were rice and beans uh in the outfield. But anyway, when I hit the trail, I didn't know really much about trail names, and I just started signing the registers as rice. Anyway, this flip-flopper saw me and uh he started calling me Sprained Rice because of my limp, and that's the name that that stuck the rest of the way and and to this day basically. But uh I I eventually got it all the way, you know, down the the trail. I did skip over the whites at first because of you know, my I didn't want to stress my foot too much, but once I finished everything south, I came back, did the whites, and then I um uh was able to get back up to uh Baxter uh park and I reclimbed Katatin. It was all all within a year, and uh uh but it was kind of discombobulated because of that. And I think that's the reason why I did it a second time, uh partly because I met another uh hiker during that first trip uh who was only out for a section. He later he joined me later for that stretch through the whites, and um we became really, really, really good friends. He, you know, he's basically my closest trail friend. And uh a couple years later, he told me uh he and his wife were up in Boston, they're from North Carolina, and so we got together up there, and after a few beers, um he he told me he was gonna through hike the trail in in like a year. And so I said to him, um, I gave him the line that he gave me the first time we met. I was sitting in in a shelter as he came up the poach trail. I was the only one there eating my dinner, and uh he looked like he had just gotten out of a car. Uh he was so clean and neat, but he he had he had actually hiked about 16 miles that day. As he's coming toward the shelter, he said, Is there room for one more? And he was serious. I I thought he was so uh uh innocent or or naive to not know there's always room for one more in a shelter. Um but anyway, we hit we hit it off. We hiked together for about two weeks until his uh wife came to pick him up and bring him home. Anyway, when he told me he was planning to through hike the trail, um I asked him, you know, is there room for one more? So we we did it together. Uh we spent every single night uh together on the trail except for one night. And um, you know, so we shared equipment like water filter and stove, um, and and here and there a tent when we needed one. Um and it was uh all northbound. So that was and and no interruptions basically. Um we we went from Springer to Katain, uh and we took because I had done the trail before and he had done quite a bit in terms of his section hiking, we knew a lot of people all up and down the trail, and I arranged for more mail drops than our usual because of these people I knew that wanted to help out. So I had we had packages sent to their homes. We ended up with like 35 mail drops because of that. And my southbound friends from '89, uh, a lot of them uh actually lived in the Atlanta area. So I let them know I was gonna be going north, and this was in 1992 now, and uh they they offered to drive drive us up to uh Springer for the start of our hike. And on the way up there, I was describing all this in terms of mail drops and stuff, and they got a good chuckle out of that because they knew it was almost twice what you normally have for mail drops. And I told them, well, it it's sort of like what um what Ed Garvey would do, uh, knowing all these people on the trail before he did his 1970 hike, uh, they met him here and there, and and I was kind of doing the same thing. I had read his book during that one-month convalescence uh in '89, and uh you know, had become a fan of fan of his. Uh so they they uh we we started calling ourselves the traveling Garveys, and and we used that as a trail family name for the rest of the way. We we uh actually inducted a few people along the way who who really wanted to become a traveling Garvey. We used uh uh technically we were supposed to use his book as the Bible, but we didn't carry it. So any uh any heavy book we could find we would use to uh swear in these people to uh become traveling Garveys. One of them is uh was Jean Cashin. We made her a traveling Garvey, and uh and eventually, uh actually at the 1992 Alder Gathering, Ed was there. Um he had uh written to me and actually knew exactly where to send that letter, which was really amazing. Uh he mailed it to me in Andover, Maine, and it arrived just shortly before I got there. It's not it wasn't a usual trail stop back in those days. Uh I still to this day don't know how he figured that out. He might have called Gene Cashin. I don't know. But anyway, he wrote to me asking for permission to use one of my register entries from my first do hike. Uh I drew trail profiles of the different states. So uh Georgia was steep up, steep down with with stricken hikers in the on the tops of these uh peaks. So real rough, crude uh drawings. Um Virginia was a perfect circle because it you know never ends, and so forth. But he ended up not using that uh page from that register in his in his second book, but that was fine. There he was at the gathering uh in Dartmouth that year, and he was signing copies of his uh new book that had uh just come out uh based on his 1990 attempt to through hike. And uh we walked up to him, introduced ourselves. He had actually heard about us as the traveling Garveys from some hikers that were part of the Sierra Club expedition in '92. Um he was uh we were a little hesitant. In fact, I was afraid when I got that letter and saw his return address that he was gonna be telling us to cease and desist, but he he never mentioned that in the letter. And uh he was all uh he he was tickled basically to hear that a troll family had called themselves the Trailing Garveys. Uh and we became really good friends from that point on. I I really uh uh am kind of honored and privileged, I think, to to know that I was able to know, and a lot of us are uh able to say this, that we knew some of these trail legends uh while they were still with us, like uh Earl Schaefer, Ed Garvey, Gene Spee, of course, even Chester Zulevsky, the first Southbounder. You know, knowing uh all these people uh in those uh late um 80s, early 90s, uh it really means a lot to me. You know, it's it's something that current threw hikers uh obviously can't uh appreciate or or uh enjoy in a sense. Uh so I really kind of feel like I was there at the right time, at the right place to uh to meet and get to know a lot of these people.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Bill Bill, uh I was gonna ask you this question later, but I'll ask it now. First of all, you mentioned two people uh uh that uh many people are are very familiar with, but not everybody perhaps listening to this podcast. Uh briefly uh tell us who Ed Garvey is.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah, Ed Garvey uh was a longtime PATC volunteer, I believe he was supervisor of trails during the time when the uh Park Service uh was going to close all the shelters in Shenandoah National Park, and he famously told them uh if you do that, the PATC will stop maintaining the trail. And they backed down. They um uh either didn't close or they reopened the the shelters that had been closed. Uh so he he stood up to them. He he worked his whole career was uh he was actually a financial uh guy at the National Science Foundation. So he was able to retire early at the age of 55, and that's when he threw hike the AT in 1970. Um so doing the math, he was 75 in 1990 when he tried to do it a second time. He he just couldn't uh uh couldn't make it. He he flip flopped up. North and uh Maine just really tore him up. So he had to you know cancel that uh the rest of that hike. Although he did continue to travel to trail towns uh to continue interviewing people and hiking uh a little bit each day each each day. So Ed Ed is really a legend. He was on the ATC Board of Managers uh for many years. Um he became uh he received the uh highest award from uh the ATC for his work there. And he was one of the founders of of ALDA um in at their very first uh organizational meeting, which was in March of 1983. I'm pretty sure he uh yeah, he was at the uh first gathering the year before before the organization was was created. So Ed Ed uh you know really influenced a lot of people with his first book, which came out in 1971. And you can see the numbers of through hikers uh jumping after that book came out. It was uh one of the first real how-to guidebooks on hiking the AT. Um, folks often joked that it never rained on Ed Garvey. He was so optimistic. Uh and and that's what I think helped motivate people to go out and try the trail themselves was you know that that feeling they got after after reading Ed's Ed's account. He uh, as part of that book, he he published uh included what amounts to the first data book of trail mileages, um, which lives on to this day. Um and he had uh uh quite a few uh idiosyncrasies here and there. He he uh gave us uh he gave everybody the recipe for what he called Citadel spread, which was something that wouldn't spoil in your pack even in the summer. Um I forget the exact uh recipe. I never did make it myself, but uh kind of but it had a lot, it was really high in fat. It was a spread uh that you would put on anything or just throw in anything you were making. Um you know, he was also a big uh very fond of of patches. You know, he would encourage people to sew their club patches onto their shirts and so forth. But um, yeah, he was and he was a great storyteller. Uh he he often um you know would just talk all night uh with with stories about different people and so forth. He met he had met all the uh he he knew grant grandma gatewood um and many of those uh really early, early pioneer hikers. So Ed and uh I mentioned uh Chester Zhulevsky and Gene Sby, they both threw hiked the AT in 1951. Uh Gene became the second northbound through hiker after Earl Schaefer, who did it in 1948. And Chester was the first southbound through hiker. And uh as as luck would have it, they ran across each other at Wind Gap in Pennsylvania and not knowing the other existed until they met. Um and lucky we only recently learned that there's actual photo of them posing together at that meeting, which is really uh quite remarkable. We're trying to get a hold of the uh the negative of that so we can have a better print of it uh for the museum, because it's really it's not only the first time a northbounder met a southbounder, which is the way I've always thought of it uh up until recently, but it it's the first time two through hikers met each other, period. Uh so it's really it's really amazing. They they um hooked they last saw each other uh in 1951, as far as I know. Uh Gene invited Chester to visit him in Georgia, where Gene lived, after he reached the southern terminus, which was at Mount Orgothorpe then, and Chester did. He he took a bus to uh Cordell or Macon. I'm not sure where Gene was living at the time. He uh Gene is originally from Cordell, Georgia, and um then Chester went on home to uh Naugatu, Connecticut, uh where he basically lived his whole life. Uh and they they as far as I know they never saw each other after that until the 1998 gathering, uh, which I I was the coordinator of all at the time, and I was organizing the program for that for that gathering. And we we decided to make the theme, the a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earl's 1948 hike. And we wanted to have Earl as the main speaker, but he had told us two years earlier that he'd be out hiking that year for a third and final through hike, which he did, and he was out there uh at the time of the gathering. Uh but we invited a lot of other pioneer through hikers to that gathering, including Gene, who stood in for Earl as the featured speaker on Saturday night. Um Chester came, uh Leon Barkman, Burt Gilbert, um and and several others. Oh, and Lucy Seeds, who is uh Grandma Gatewood's daughter, uh, she came with a box full of Grandma Gatewood's uh clothing and and other things. It was a great, really a great gathering uh because of that. But I was going to have the reunion for Gene and Chester occur on stage Friday night during our roll call of the clash years where we go back in time to see who the last person standing is. So we knew it wasn't going to be Earl, who was at other gatherings and would was the last person standing. But this year I knew it was gonna be Gene and Chester, and I really was looking forward to this really dramatic reunion on stage. Well, there I was with Gene and his wife, Eugenia, in the food line at the cafeteria that afternoon, Friday, uh waiting to get in there. And out from the doors comes uh Chester, having just had his dinner, and he's kind of looking around to see where he is, and he spotted me. I I knew him pretty well by then. He'd actually come to my house uh a couple of times, uh, because I also live in Connecticut, and he was all busting out and smiles and came over to say hello to me. And I'm saying to myself, no, no, no. Uh not here, not in the food line. But neither Chester nor Gene recognized each other as Chester approached me. And I thought, okay, I I can't I can't just pretend uh I don't know this guy. I so I said, Chester, I got somebody for you to meet again. Chester, Gene S. B, Gene, Chester Zulevsky, and boy, it was a really uh powerful moment. I mean, they were so happy to see each other. Uh and I'm thinking to myself, you know, there were no cell phones in 1998 uh to speak of, basically. Uh so there's no video. And the people on either side of us waiting, waiting in line for the cafeteria, uh, had no clue what was going on. And I'm looking around saying, folks, you don't know what's going on here. Uh so only myself and uh Mrs. Espie, I think, appreciated the moment uh because it was really, really a special moment. They did reunite on stage. Uh uh Gene spoke. Uh we called him up on stage when we got to the class of 1951. And everybody was, you know, this was new to everybody else, so everybody was going wild. Uh Chester was a soft-spoken, shy guy, so he didn't choose to speak at that time. Gene did, and uh so after a few words, they they went to the uh stairs to go back down to their seats. And that's when I uh first told everybody uh as the clapping had died down. I said, by the way, you know, when they met met met each other, that was the first time a Southbounder met a Northbounder, and everybody stood up and went crazy again. And and that was not film either, uh, unfortunately. So, but uh you know, a lot of great moments are never uh captured uh on video, but they definitely live on in memory for sure.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Uh uh you mentioned another person who's uh sort of legendary on the Appalachian Trail, Gene Cashin. Tell us who Gene Cashin uh is or was.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Right. She uh she since passed away. She was the uh the front desk person at the ATC headquarters. I think her title was uh eventually became information specialist. She was the uh trail mom for through hikers through the from the 70s on into the into the well into the 90s. I think she she retired in 1996 because uh we honored her at that year's gathering in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Um she would be the one that would take your your photo on a Polaroid uh to to preserve in a in a notebook for for that whole hiking year. Um she was just uh uh a real uh in fact that's what everybody kind of referred to her as a as a trail mom. So uh Gene and um Jean Cashin, Gene Spee, Ed Garvey they're all in the uh AT Hall of Fame uh over the years. We've we've inducted all three of those folks. Uh but yeah, she was uh there were so many stories uh about Gene. Um we don't have the time to uh tell some of them. My favorite involves her and Ed. Um another uh uh well-known hiker at the time named Albi Pockrob was doing a through hike, and he was coming into he was going to be coming into Blackburn Trail Center, and people knew in advance that he'd be there, including uh uh Ed Garvey, who was a friend of his. And Ed and Gene organized uh uh sort of a quasi banquet reception for Albie without him knowing it. Ed was dressed in a tuxedo. Gene had a uh a gown on, and uh, you know, I've heard about it, I wasn't there, of course, but uh it's one of those great stories that uh you really had to hear either Gene or Ed tell it. Um but yeah, that was uh that was Ed. He was a real, you know, both of them, Gene, uh Gene Cashin and Ed, were were just so part of the AT for many years.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Uh well you've you've already mentioned several what I would call heroes of the Appalachian Trail. Uh can you name any others briefly that that you personally knew that you would consider to be heroes of the Appalachian Trail?

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Um sure. Uh obviously, um Earl, uh don't want to give him any sh short shrift here. He he came out uh of his shell. He was kind of a uh I don't want to use the word loner, but he liked to be by himself a lot. Um but after that 1998 gathering, uh which he could not attend, uh he started coming to gatherings. He showed up in 1996 because we were right down the road from him. We were in Carlisle and he was in um uh York um or York Springs. Uh so he should he just we we had invited him. Cindy Ross, uh another trail legend, uh knew how to get in touch with him, and she told him about the gathering and invited him to come. So he showed up on a Saturday afternoon, and nobody had ever, nobody there except for maybe Ed Garvey and a few others had ever really seen him in person. Um so the word went through the gathering uh that day that Earl Schaefer was here, and I remember somebody saying there was a big crowd in the hallway at the school we were at, and they said, Well, he's right over there. I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking for this tall guy, a strapping, you know, young guy that you had imprinted on your brain from that famous summit photo in 1948, and I didn't see him. He was nowhere to be found. But eventually somebody pointed him out, and he was not as tall, and of course, he'd gray and thinning hair, uh, but he was just, you know, magnetic. I mean, people were all around him all the rest of the afternoon. We uh I took him to lunch that day with uh Scott Gryerson, Scott Grierson, uh aka maniac uh who threw hiked the trail a couple times. He and I took Earl to lunch that day, and that's when Earl told us, to our shock and disbelief, that he was gonna be doing another through hike in in two years. We we just didn't believe he was it was gonna happen. And I remember that day, I mean, as we were going back to the school, he looked up at the clouds, which were very few and far between, as far as I I recall, and he said, Well, it's gonna rain tomorrow. And uh I just didn't believe him. And sure enough, we woke up Sunday morning, it was raining. Um, but he agreed that day to come back on Sunday with his slides, and we just basically canceled the morning's events at the gathering that year to have him show his slideshow. And it was um, I mean, we we that was the most the most well-attended gathering we'd ever had. Uh estimates ranged up to 600 people being there. Uh I'm not sure that was accurate, uh, but it was definitely at least 500. The auditorium we were at seated 700, and and we didn't quite fill that. But in any event, uh the place was packed uh as as much as full as as it could be with everybody there. And none of us had ever seen these slides before. And they were in color too, which was a surprise to me. But he shot color film uh on slides for that 1948 Trek, and it was just again, just a really special moment. And it was sort of his his coming out then in terms of uh trail events and so forth, and he did others besides the All the Gathering, but uh it was really great to uh to meet him. He did the trail three times, um 48, uh again in the 60s, I want to say 65 as a southbounder, and then finally in 1998, his 1960s hike, he's coming down uh some mountain in in Georgia and just happened to be uh at the bottom of that, uh at the road crossing of that uh section of trail. Gene Espy was there with his wife and his two daughters. Just happened to be there as uh Earl comes out of the woods, and uh Gene said, Oh my, if it isn't Earl Schaefer, and and Earl knew Gene, and he said, Oh, Gene Espy. And again, you know, just just a magical moment on the side of the trail between these the first and second ever through hikers of the AT.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Huh. Uh Bill, you've uh kind of alluded to the gathering, and in another episode, we're gonna talk in some detail about the gathering. Um I'd like to turn the focus back onto you a bit. Uh you threw hike the trail twice, as you've described. How do you think that hiking the trail changed you, if at all?

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Yeah, that's a good question. I um I reflected on that after my first threw hike. I wrote a letter uh to thank all the people who helped me out that year. And uh I really want it to be, you know, a special letter, not just content-wise and and writing style and so forth, but the actual production of it. I didn't want to have it run off at staples, so to speak. So I camped out for a week at my old journalism professor's house because he had a little amateur print shop in his basement, and for a whole week we set the type by hand, you know, lead type. I had never done that before. Uh threw it onto uh his 1890 printing press and ran it off one copy at a time. Uh had to print both sides, so we had to let it dry overnight uh when it finally came time to printing. And in that letter, uh, toward the end, I kind of reflected on on the changes that uh I went through, and I know a lot of people do, um, that you just don't worry about a lot of stuff anymore. Uh you learn to trust yourself. Uh, you stop worrying about what lies over the rise of the next hill. Uh, if it is in fact a rise and not a false summit, you know, a lot of things just bother you at the beginning or or or cause you anxiety or stress. Like getting into a hostel, getting like as you're approaching a hostel and there are other hikers that you know are going to be there, you're worried about whether or not there's gonna be a bunk for you. Well, toward the end, who cares? You know, you could just sleep on the porch somewhere or something. I mean, it just really took a lot of the uh sh anxiety uh off my shoulders uh uh having done the AT. Um and and there were other you know things too. I remember uh I reflected too on something that one of my classmates at Columbia had told me when my friends there first heard that I was gonna be hiking the AT after graduation. He was from uh West Germany, which was West Germany at the time, and he had he knew a lot about backpacking and and trekking. And he he he knew he I he knew what was gonna happen to me. And he said, you know, Bill, that trail is gonna be uh become a part of you for the rest of your life. And and you know, he was right. Uh I remember writing that uh you know everything I ever everything of uh I do and and am is going to be uh contain some piece of the Appalachian Trail uh for the rest of my life. And and it has it has proven to be that.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Let's uh turn the focus to the Appalachian Trail Museum. When did you first learn about the AT Museum project?

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Okay, so uh uh not too many people know this, but uh I got to know Larry Luxembourg when he was working on his on his book, uh Walking the Appalachian Trail. You know, he interviewed me, and although it was hard for him to pin me down because uh every time he wanted to talk, there was somebody else nearby who I thought he should talk to, uh, especially when we were at trail days together. Um but I got to know Larry and he he told me he was thinking about starting a museum on the Appalachian Trail. This was uh in 1998 that he that he told me this because uh I uh kind of consulted with him a lot leading up to that gathering in terms of uh the celebration of the 50th anniversary through hike. Uh he knew a lot of the uh pioneers and how to get a hold of them uh that so we could invite them to the gathering. So I was working uh a lot with him even back then. And uh I was doing uh editions of the newsletter for Alda that year. I wasn't the newsletter editor per se, because I you know I was the coordinator. Of the whole th shebang. But I did put out a couple of the editions mainly so I could promote the uh the gathering. And one of those editions, the lead story I wrote, was Larry's announcement that he was planning to organize a uh museum for the Appalachian Trail. Uh so that's that's kind of the um the start date that we now kind of give the uh the genesis of the AT museum is 1998. I still have that edition of the newsletter here, and uh uh you know it was um uh really uh I'm so glad that uh we put that in writing and and publicized it the way we did because it the idea just took off. Um he believe it or not, it started out as a committee of Alda, uh the the AT Museum. Uh it wasn't in that format very long, but we used Alda's um resources to uh start a fund to start raising money uh to help uh organize this thing. And uh it didn't take long to uh for the museum to create its own board and um uh bank account and so forth. So um I was on the board from the get-go. Uh not in any I I was an Alda representative at the time. We had uh not just uh regular members but representatives from different groups like the ATC and uh and Alda. And uh Noel DeCalvacante and I were the were the two rips from uh Alda on the board. So he too was involved from the very beginning. Um he was the coordinator of Alda before me. Um and I just have never been off the board in all that time.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Uh in what in what ways have you been involved with the museum? What what different uh roles?

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Well, I I uh at one uh I wasn't the original secretary of of the museum uh board, but I did assume that position uh a few years into it, and I served as the museum secretary, board secretary for uh uh quite a few uh all the way up until um the this past year uh when when Larry stepped down and I uh was chosen to uh succeed him. So uh I'm not sure what the exact year was that I started as a secretary, but uh it was quite a quite a ways. Um other you know, just helping out in it in many other ways. Um doing publicity, um uh and just showing up at every meeting. We didn't have Zoom back in those days, so we always had to travel to uh get together in person. Um that I kind of missed, but uh I understand it it is much more convenient these days to do it via Zoom.

SPEAKER_00 47:18

And and we shouldn't leave out the Hall of Fame committee either.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Right. So when that when you started that, Jim, uh which was 2011, was the first class year. Uh what year did you propose that? Was it in 2010?

SPEAKER_00 47:32

It was in 2010, yes, yes, late in 2010.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

Right. So the museum had opened that that summer on National Trails Day of 2010, I think it was June 5th, and um and uh it was just a great idea, Jim, because it was just the logical extension of of an AT museum to uh no nobody had ever really uh nobody had done it before. And um as we keep finding out every year, there are just some great stories out there from the past that just need to be told and have people uh reminded of. But when that committee started, um originally I I it was kind of happening uh uh and I didn't really realize uh it was going on at first, and I I mentioned it to Larry and to Noel, because Noel was on this Hall of Fame committee. I said, gee, you know, I I would like to be on that. Uh so luckily uh they had no objections, and uh, you know, I I uh uh right away I was totally uh you know uh intimidated in a way by the the real uh bona fide historians we had, uh like Tom Johnson and Larry, of course, um the late Tom Johnson. Uh but I uh and and Brian King. I I did my homework though, and uh I remember the very first person I really pushed for induction into the AT Hall of Fame was uh Frank Scherer. I read up on him, um dug up uh actually one account that's not too handily uh available, and I put together my my nomination, and I really felt so great when uh Tom Johnson replied and said, I can support that nomination. And Frank did get in that year, um uh and deservedly so.

SPEAKER_00 49:35

Yeah, Tom was a great guy, and and we all we all sorely miss him. No question about that.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Yeah. In terms of some other, uh, just just a remind reminded myself of uh you were asked uh some of the other heroes on the AT. I would definitely put up there uh Bill Foot. He was uh a huge influence on me. Um he was so actively involved in all sorts of things. Uh he was a member of Alda. Uh he was the head of the uh Natural Bridge AT Club. Um you know, he was uh a longtime volunteer uh and and just uh just kept going out there uh doing maintenance and so forth on the trail. My uh first encounter with him was at the 1989 gathering, which was my first gathering. I hitchhiked to uh Concord College, where it was held in West Virginia from the trail. And uh a lot a lot of other Thu hikers, uh southbound Thu hikers, and I say a lot, there were only about 20 of us all together that year, but we had 12 show up, 12 or 15 show up at that gathering, partly because we uh I had heard about the gathering uh b up in Maine, and as it was getting closer, I thought, gee, it wouldn't be it would be great to have all the uh Southbounders come or go so that we could meet each other. Hardly any of us had ever seen each other. We were all so spread out. There were no cell phones, obviously. So I started writing postcards to to the people I saw on the registers, to the obvious trail uh mail drops that were farther down the trail, and I left register entries for any any of them that were behind me, who again I didn't know if they existed even. And uh and and like I said, we had quite a fair fair number there. One of them was from Georgia, and when they got to uh uh in September, Hurricane Hugo passed across the trail as a tropical storm, but it caused a lot of damage, and particularly uh north of Parrisburg, where the trail club at that time wasn't that great in terms of maintenance, and it took them forever, if at all, to get out there to reopen the trail. The trees had literally obliterated the AT um south of the um just south of the Trimpy uh uh Trimpy 2, I guess, or no, that was Trimpy 1 shelter. And they had a uh those hikers uh in the forefront going south literally had to get off the trail uh and roadwalk into Parrisburg. Um and somehow or other this hiker from Georgia ran across uh um Bill Foote, who was out clearing his section of the trail farther north, and uh Bill uh took him home uh with him to uh help with the maintenance for one thing, but also just to uh stay off the trail until until the trail was uh a little more opened up. And uh they really bonded to the point where we get to the gathering, and I had met the this hiker as well as some other Southbounders, and in walks uh Bill and his wife Laurie, and this hiker, uh his trail name was uh Ashkosh Bajash from Athens, Georgia, saw Bill and just ran up to him, jumped up into Bill's arms like it was a family reunion, and it was so moving to see that. Uh, you know, but that's that's who who Bill Bill was. He he died of cancer way too young. Um and I forget the exact year, but uh he was he was just such a great guy. Another one I uh just really wanted to quickly mention, I didn't get to know him too well because he he he also passed away. Um he died on a trail, sort of like uh Tom Johnson did. He was out west on a trail work trip. His name was Hank Lannham from Virginia, and he at that first gathering, uh, which was so uh motivational, it was just so inspiring for me to be there at that gathering, to see all these hikers, um uh to meet some of them in person or or just learn of them for the first time. He gave one of the testimonials at the opening on Friday night, which to this day I think about, and and it wasn't just me who um still remembers that little little speech. Um Frank Log, who was uh another former coordinator of ALDA, and he served on the ATC Board of Managers. Uh that that influenced him as well, I learned years later. Um Frank is another huge influence. He uh, although he he never quite knew it at the time because I was just a regular member of Alda when he was coordinator. He is now the uh episcopal bishop of of all of Georgia. He he went into the the ministry, uh, kind of left, not really left the hiking world behind, but he definitely isn't as active as he used to be. Um of course I uh need to also uh mention Warren Doyle, another huge influence on me. Um you know he he he he can be tough to uh get along with, uh, but I've always respected the heck out of him uh for what he did. He he he or he founded all the organized hikers in a way no one had ever done before, and uh the organized the first gathering in '82 with about 225 people in attendance, which puts to shame, sad to say, some gatherings we've had where we didn't quite get the 225 uh attendees. But um he has you know always been uh uh a great uh uh influence and inspiration for me. And uh, you know, I'm I'm gonna tap him for uh a testimonial at this year's gathering in Gettysburg.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Bill, my my final question for this episode is uh uh you're taking over for, I think we both agree, a legend, uh Larry uh Luxembourg as president of the museum. Uh can you share with us uh some of the plans you have for the museum in the next few years?

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Sure. Well, um as as folks will probably see be uh uh uh well before this uh podcast uh uh makes it on the air, uh we we've uh we are coming out with a brand new newsletter. Um Mills Kelly and and you, Jim, are are on the communications committee right now, where we've never had a communications committee per se before. Um that was one of the goals I had was to to improve our um communications with with the outside world uh in an effort to you know attract and and retain uh members of the museum. Um I I really came in um and did a I did a listening tour per se at the beginning. Uh I called people on the phone, board members and others, our our our managers uh at the museum and at the hostel, just to kind of get a feel for uh what what was going on out there and and and to see what what needed to be done. And I came up with uh you know a pretty hefty list of things that needed doing. Um and I would say that um at least halfway through uh we needed to make some changes. Uh some of them were difficult as as they almost by nature would be. Uh, but we've we've gotten over some humps. And I'm just uh keep telling people, I'm looking forward to the uh all the uh I mean the uh AT Hall of Fame banquet in November. Uh because I think by that time I'll I'll I'll I'll be smiling a lot more. Uh we'll we'll have gotten through some of this uh some of these issues that people really wanted to be addressed. One of the big big plans right now is uh our fall fundraising campaign. And I we have a fundraising committee that started last year, really well uh organized committee under uh a woman named Liz Schaefer. They have monthly meetings on a regular basis, you know, every third Thursday they they meet. And it's it's really been a very beneficial group. Um but they uh uh so the idea I had for this fall's campaign is to honor Larry uh as our outgoing uh retired uh museum founder and president. So um folks can uh expect to you know see uh some communications on that uh in a couple months. But uh this this is uh a drive that will uh uh honor Larry for uh his 28 years as uh the leader of the AT Museum.

SPEAKER_00 59:54

Thank you very much, Bill. My my guest has been Bill O'Brien, uh longtime uh person involved with the Appalachian Trail and also with uh Alda and and uh the AT Museum, and very recently is the new president of the Appalachian Trail Museum. In another episode, I will speak to Bill about Alda. We'll go into depth about uh the history of Alda and the Alda gathering that is planned for Gettysburg uh later on this fall. Thanks a lot, Bill. Yep, thank you, Jim. Thanks for listening to this episode of A Trail of History. Please visit our physical museum located in South Central Pennsylvania within Pine Grove Furnace State Park between Carlisle and Gettysburg. We're open each year from April through October. We schedule many special events throughout the year. For complete information, visit our website at AppalachianTrail.museum. You can also follow us on several social media sites. We want this to be an interactive podcast. If you have ideas for topics we ought to cover or people we ought to interview, please let us know. Contact us at atmpodcast at gmail.com. The music for this podcast is courtesy of Randy Windtalker Motes. For the AT Museum, I'm Jim Foster!