Abstract
David Kopchak details the early years of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, focusing on resource management activities in the 1980s. Kopchak discusses various restoration projects involving disturbed sites, land acquisition, wildlife management (particularly beaver populations), water quality monitoring, and interactions with local farmers. Key topics include removing debris from former industrial and residential sites, managing riverbank erosion, conducting wildlife surveys, and the challenges of working with limited resources and evolving park management strategies. The interview provides insights into the park's early organizational structure, staff, and the process of transforming a landscape with a complex industrial and agricultural history into a national recreation area.
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Interviewee
Kopchak, David (interviewee)
Interviewer
Rosser, Arrye (interviewer)
Project
Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Date
2-8-2019
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
80 minutes
Recommended Citation
"David Kopchak interview, 08 February 2019" (2019). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 343003.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1445
Transcript
David Kopchak [00:00:00] Identifying the disturbed sites in the park, within the park boundaries, became an area of attention because, well, now it’s federally owned. Let’s get the federal government to do something. You know, the river itself is an active animal. It’s eroding. And there were issues then about where it would impact a road, for instance. There’s a couple places where, whether it’s A-P [Akron-Peninsula] Road or Riverview Road, where the erosion was severe enough, the natural erosion of the river was severe enough that it was getting close to the road. I’m sure that’s still a continuing problem. The railroad, the canal, all those features that parallel the river were under threat. And there was always an effort to manage that. I can think of a few sites at the time that basically the Army Corps of Engineers fixed those problems. And this was before bioengineering and so forth, but that’s always been a concern. How much could you live with that was natural versus all this man made erosion?
Arrye Rosser [00:01:14] Were there signs that, well, what was the appearance of the river? I was kind of curious. I mean, did it smell and things like that?
David Kopchak [00:01:24] Well, you could always tell if you were in the south end of the park that you were close to the Akron’s treatment plant. And then I think, pretty sure while I was here, that was the era where they began to manage the. It was the composting facility, the management of the sludge.
Arrye Rosser [00:01:46] I remember that too.
David Kopchak [00:01:48] I think that’s obviously gotten better over the years, but you know, it was probably the case, at least for water quality, that that was probably the single biggest point source, you know, of problems.
Arrye Rosser [00:02:02] That was the sewage coming in from overflows.
David Kopchak [00:02:05] Yes.
Arrye Rosser [00:02:06] In rain events.
David Kopchak [00:02:07] Exactly. That part of it. You know, it was a- Who knows, it was state-of-the-art at the time, but there were still limitations and issues.
Arrye Rosser [00:02:18] Were there signs like at the time that people were feeling signs of optimism that things were turning around?
David Kopchak [00:02:25] Absolutely, because I can recall some of the first- Well, the first large-scale, I guess, river cleanup. That was quite a day, as I recall.
Arrye Rosser [00:02:37] When was that?
David Kopchak [00:02:39] Oh, I’d have to stop and think. I’d just be guessing somewhere around ’90, but maybe a little earlier.
Arrye Rosser [00:02:47] I think I looked up that, the first River Day. Is that what you’re remembering? [crosstalk] It was 1991.
David Kopchak [00:02:54] That sounds- That sounds about right. A large number of volunteers and then lots of sites identified for folks to go pick up trash. Some of that was fairly ambitious. They would put someone like myself or any one of a number of other rangers with a small group of people say, here’s your sight or your tooth or your foresights, go do it.
Arrye Rosser [00:03:23] Yeah. Here’s some gloves, right?
David Kopchak [00:03:25] Here’s some gloves. I can remember one site. It wasn’t mine. It was- I won’t use his name, one of the other rangers, and he had sent his volunteers over the hill to pull up an engine block. And I said- I asked him, what are you doing? Someone’s going to get hurt. I mean, those are hundreds of pounds. I think they got it up. But it was- It was surprising what people were willing to tackle.
Arrye Rosser [00:03:53] That’s how I kind of remember the early- I came in ’93 that it was really about trash removal.
David Kopchak [00:03:59] Yes.
Arrye Rosser [00:04:00] It was these dump sites that they were focusing on for River Day. Yeah.
David Kopchak [00:04:04] Of course things were much more visible. And as I mentioned before, the Valley was always a place for people just to- Well, it looks- It looks bad. I’ll just- I’ll get rid of my trash here. And so it became a frequent place to put things.
Arrye Rosser [00:04:19] My understanding is that there wasn’t a lot of municipal trash pickup for the people that lived here. So they also just- They were responsible for disposing of their trash on their own property in burn pits.
David Kopchak [00:04:30] And of course the older residents, not in terms of age but more longer term, would have been here a while, like many rural residents, as you mentioned, they had a burn barrel or had a pile of- There was- Debris removal was part of the management of every acquisition the park ever made, I’m sure, whether it was just taking down a commercial building or just a home site, someone’s home of 80 years or whatever, there was a pile of something out back. And at some point when the house came down or the driveway was removed or whatever it is, there was always an effort to go back and get that material.
Arrye Rosser [00:05:19] Mm-hmm. And who was responsible for that? Were you- Were you involved in that, [crosstalk] and was it contractors?
David Kopchak [00:05:25] Well, it was all- [phone rings]
Arrye Rosser [00:05:33] It’s okay.
David Kopchak [00:05:35] That’s why we have an editor.
Arrye Rosser [00:05:37] My mother’s texting me, so.
David Kopchak [00:05:43] I didn’t think to shut this off.
Arrye Rosser [00:05:46] Do you need a drink or anything?
David Kopchak [00:05:49] Not yet, I don’t think. [long pause] Sorry.
Arrye Rosser [00:06:13] No big deal. It’s fine.
David Kopchak [00:06:16] You know, the park was set up, of course, differently back in the ’80s, but superintendent, two assistant superintendents, Bob Martin, Einar Johnson. My recollection is that Einar had responsibility for a lot of the land acquisition and then dealing with those properties. So they had a term, whatever their terminology was, for removing the buildings, pavement, all that kind of stuff. Those were contracted largely.
Arrye Rosser [00:06:59] Demolition contractors is what we called it.
David Kopchak [00:07:01] There you go. There you go. And various people over the years had responsibility. Her name escapes me right this second, but one of the longest term employees for maintenance. Lucy?
Arrye Rosser [00:07:12] Was it Sylvia?
David Kopchak [00:07:12] No. Oh, shoot.
Arrye Rosser [00:07:15] Dee Strickland.
David Kopchak [00:07:16] Dee Strickland, yeah, had some of that responsibility and-
Arrye Rosser [00:07:20] Yeah, of course. And she was doing that when I knew her.
David Kopchak [00:07:23] Yep. And I don’t even- I can’t even imagine how many hundreds of properties or contracts large and small were done to address all those things.
Arrye Rosser [00:07:34] No one seems to have their finger on what that number is.
David Kopchak [00:07:40] I would assume it’s in a file somewhere, but that-
Arrye Rosser [00:07:43] I think it’s in a lot of files and takes some research to count them. I asked maintenance to estimate them, but I don’t think anyone knows. Do you have any sense of it or-
David Kopchak [00:07:56] I don’t- I just- I just- I just- It has to be in the hundreds and the scale would just be all over the place.
Arrye Rosser [00:08:03] Yeah, there’s very large properties and very small properties.
David Kopchak [00:08:06] Gas. What would have been a gas station or something at the time. Or the smallest, simplest home, which were of course quite a bit easier. And then some became controversial. Right across the street. I don’t remember the gentleman’s name, but that was on the front page of the paper when Mr. Joya was one of the folks sort of calling attention to the removal of the house across the street.
Arrye Rosser [00:08:32] So this is Hines Hill Road across from what we think of as the conference center. Now what was that?
David Kopchak [00:08:38] Well, there was just a residence.
Arrye Rosser [00:08:40] Were they opposed to the-
David Kopchak [00:08:42] I think it was just the-
Arrye Rosser [00:08:44] Or the quality of the home.
David Kopchak [00:08:46] It was. And I don’t know, maybe it was one of those that maybe there was some regret. I shouldn’t try to characterize it, but I just recall that when the house came out there was always an effort to take out any non native plants. And my recollection is that that house had some large blue spruce which are non-native to this area. So they didn’t want those plants in the landscape or propagating or whatever. So, you know, the foundation plantings were almost always non native. It’s just that’s how it is in this area. And while you’re doing a demolition, it makes sense to take those plants as well. And that gentleman, I wish I could remember his name, but I recall him or attention being paid to that story that he was very sad that the park had to take down his trees. But that made sense for what the park was aiming for, which was a wooded hillside returning to nature. But it became one of those things that was occasional controversy.
Arrye Rosser [00:10:07] Yeah, it was in the media.
David Kopchak [00:10:09] Yeah, I recall being on the front page or someplace like that.
Arrye Rosser [00:10:13] How do you remember like the wildlife changes, like comparing the ’80s to now?
David Kopchak [00:10:19] Well, of course, the two things I had some got to work on was beaver management. And it wasn’t obviously we have always had the case of the Beaver Marsh, which was a good thing. There’s a great story about that. People are better able to talk about that. But beaver also began to show up in places where there wasn’t a good thing and they would often block a road culvert and then we had a flooded road. So it was actually my favorite job while I was here is I got to the park also by the way had has had a number of old farm ponds or even their own structures where beaver liked to block the spillways. And that’s just natural, can’t help it. But I got to do the live trapping of the beaver and at that time this is ’80s you could move them to a willing- Someone who was willing to accept them. And we had a relationship then with pretty sure it was. Yeah it was Cleveland Metroparks who took a few of those and it was kind of fun to try to outsmart them, get them in a live trap, transport them and get them released somewhere where they might do some good and do no harm. So.
Arrye Rosser [00:11:51] And at that time I think I skimmed that report. So I don’t think anyone totally knows when the beavers came back to the Valley. I see in the wildlife report from the mid-’80s that when that report was done there was two active sites that would have been the mid-’80s. One was at Stumpy Basin and one was at the Oxbow at Beaver Marsh. So they weren’t widespread initially. That was sort of the lodge sites but I think they quickly became so and but I’m guessing that reading ODNR records of beaver population in Ohio they probably came back in the ’70s and that we were just not managing the land, paying attention like they were there. But who was there to write a report exactly?
David Kopchak [00:12:39] Exactly. Or a landowner either was able to tolerate when they did move through or they didn’t. And something I’ve learned in my work experience since leaving the park is that there’s trappers everywhere. There’s guys who- It’s just part of their lifestyle. Any stream in the area probably has somebody that’s trapping it. Not necessarily in the urban areas, but as you get the least bit rural, there are guys who still enjoy trapping. They may not get much economic benefit out of it, but just that lifestyle and that culture is still there and those guys are always around. If they showed up in the park area back in the ’70s and ’80s, somebody dealt with them, whether it was for the fur or just to the experience of trapping. I’m sure that’s how they were dealt with. I see it today.
Arrye Rosser [00:13:43] It’s interesting. So they were not the way we think. They weren’t widespread in the ’80s as we think of them now, where you throw a stone and hit a beaver almost. But they were kind of in their expansion period.
David Kopchak [00:13:59] I don’t doubt it. It might have been very rare, but they’re always on the move. You know, it’s just part of their innate, their life history that the young one’s got to go somewhere and they find a place. And I deal with them in my work now, and I wish we could keep them. There’s very few places where they work very well. Park’s a great place.
Arrye Rosser [00:14:21] I have one in my backyard. I haven’t seen the beaver, but I’ve seen the trees.
David Kopchak [00:14:26] My best day at work with the Park Service, we brought in an expert. I wish I could remember his name. I recall he was from Wisconsin, but he was a- He was an authority on wildlife and beaver in particular. And we brought him in for a conference or a discussion or whatever. But I got to go get him from the airport, and I spent the day with him, and I got to show him where we had impacts from beaver. And it was fascinating to spend the day with someone like that and, you know, learn the biology and explain the landscape and so forth, and it was terrific.
Arrye Rosser [00:15:06] Do you remember about any of the other wildlife?
David Kopchak [00:15:09] Well, of course, they started to manage deer, and then it was a blessing and a curse. And we started the first, I think- Did we call it deer monitoring, but we- Were they certainly doing the spotlight surveys? Yes. And, you know, frankly, that was not only interesting, that was fun. Probably couldn’t do it today the way we did it then we built.
Arrye Rosser [00:15:42] Explain how it worked for people that never heard of spotlighting surveys.
David Kopchak [00:15:47] Well, of course, people knew that you could attract deer and spot them with a large, powerful light. They would notice it, they’d respond, their eyes would show up easy to identify them. And it had been determined that that was a good way to go through an area in an organized manner at the right time of day, the right season, and have people shining spotlights each way off the road right and left and make a count. So we had a- I think we did a crew of four. We had a white Dodge pickup, and we built ourselves a frame that clamped into the bed of the pickup and put some seats upholstered seats to face each way off the truck and then rigged up a way to run spotlights off the cigarette lighter. Basically, trucks weren’t as sophisticated then as they are now. And we’d come into work at whatever, whenever, maybe we were in for 10 o’clock. I can’t remember exactly. And go for a couple hours on designated segments of roadway and do that on a regular basis and then just simply count them. And then there was somebody riding, taking the count, two people spotting one, driving. And we would make our count, go to the next segment, do that. Of course, it was cold that it was usually that time of year when we were doing it because it was clear you could see into the woods. Leaves were off.
Arrye Rosser [00:17:33] It was like November or something.
David Kopchak [00:17:35] I think so. Sounds familiar. And of course, you dressed for the. For the weather. And it was. It was one of the more enjoyable tasks that we had. People used to clamor to volunteer to do it, especially the guys, the other rangers who they hunted or had a friend that hunted. I recall some firemen from Cuyahoga Falls that helped out.
Arrye Rosser [00:17:59] Huh. That’s crazy.
Arrye Rosser [00:18:00] So that’s kind of- I think I helped out back in the ’90s. And that’s about how I remember it was. I don’t remember if it was upholstered seats, but I remember we were sitting up high on the back of the pickup truck.
David Kopchak [00:18:10] Yes. Somehow. Yep.
Arrye Rosser [00:18:13] How very cool. Tell me a bit more about the Beaver Marsh area specifically. I know you were probably here at the time when some of the houses and the commercial property.
David Kopchak [00:18:26] Well, the. Of course, I got here and began working in ’86. And Gray Quarry, or what’s now called Indigo Lake, is on the west side of Riverview Road. On the east side, of course, is the Beaver Marsh. And my best recollection is that had already begun to flood. So they were active by the time I got here. But of course, my boss and some of the other folks were still around and they remember them describing that. That was- My best recollection is that was like an auto repair site, lack of a better term. Or that there were cars pulled out of there at some point when that was purchased and. And then just let go. And it was just a lucky coincidence that it became a good area for. For beaver that the park could actually tolerate, could flood there and not impact anything negatively. And it- The way it matched up with the canal, towpath and all those features. A lucky accident that, you know, has become a major attraction.
Arrye Rosser [00:19:38] I still kind of haven’t been able to get down to the bottom of how the demo worked there because we hear about the Sierra Club taking material out. But I think the Park Service must have had a demo contract to remove the vast majority of the debris because I think a lot of it was gone before the beavers flooded it, judging from aerial photography.
David Kopchak [00:20:04] That would be interesting. And of course, I think to get those kinds of-
Arrye Rosser [00:20:07] I don’t know if you have any those kind of hearsay things if you just remembered what people were talking about?
David Kopchak [00:20:09] Not on that site. And I can imagine though that, you know, in an area, in an era of limited money and lots of sites to spend money on that the quality of the, whatever you want to call it, the demolition restoration was hit or miss. Some was really good, some was probably not.
Arrye Rosser [00:20:30] Yeah.
David Kopchak [00:20:31] And I don’t know what standard, if any there was because of that, that rule.
Arrye Rosser [00:20:38] I can’t find where the record are of what the- Like I just see that there was a contract in the track files.
David Kopchak [00:20:43] It says remove building.
Arrye Rosser [00:20:45] Exactly. That was about it. And I saw the pre- The photographs from before the removal happened. So it must have been like related to the contract or maybe it was when the property was purchased. Maybe there’s something. Real estate photos.
David Kopchak [00:21:01] I recall discussions about, you know, you buy a house or a building with a, with a foundation, do you take it all out? You know, what was the- I couldn’t answer what the, what the standard was. We didn’t do any - in our resource management - any demolition. I might have received or gotten responsibility for a roadway, a gravel roadway or some concrete or whatever. But it was mostly the larger sites that we did.
Arrye Rosser [00:21:33] Yeah. So that’s interesting. So that element of the restoration was seen as a maintenance function for the smaller. In the residential properties and the smaller scale commercial properties.
David Kopchak [00:21:48] That’s my recollection, you know, is that there was always someone in maintenance that had that responsibility.
Arrye Rosser [00:21:53] Yeah. Tell me about the Station Road area. That was-
David Kopchak [00:21:58] I ended up with-
Arrye Rosser [00:21:59] A variety of things happening up there. I’m particularly interested in the Kurtz Bros. operation. But any description of the area just south of, north and south of the trailhead, it’s really interesting.
David Kopchak [00:22:10] See, I have to stop and think a little bit. But I had a project site that we called Station Road. And my only recollection of it, it was fairly spread out. It was primarily, at least the portion I worked on, was not severely disturbed. We had eroded areas. We had to bring in top. We purchased a lot of quote unquote topsoil to cover basically what was basically subsoil or sometimes it was fly ash, but cover it with. I think we were aiming for 6 inches of topsoil just to get vegetation on the sites. And that’s what I recall there at Station Road. Again, there was always some debris, fencing, just trash, you know, whatever was left from the prior use that we were removing. Regrading an area, we might address a drainage issue or try to make an improvement. Excuse me. They were very basic sorts of contracts. We weren’t doing large regrading, reshaping of sites. It was working with the landscape that was there mostly to get vegetation on it. And we made an effort to plant native species. That did not work very well at that time. I think that was back when people. Not that there wasn’t success by some agencies and landowners to get native plants established, but that didn’t work very well on large size, large-scale reclamations- [crosstalk]
Arrye Rosser [00:24:10] [inaudible] -quality of the soil materials- [crosstalk]
David Kopchak [00:24:13] Partly timing, of adequate contractors, seed, time of year, you know, the contracting cycle. You know, it was very difficult to make the timing work out and get any success.
Arrye Rosser [00:24:28] Was it your feeling like the volume of the work that had to be done was just like people were just trying to get through a lot of sites?
David Kopchak [00:24:35] Get them off the list. Yeah, check them off the list. And if, because if you were lucky enough to, to get money in the budget, then you better act and get them contract to get them done. And we had, we just tried to identify one or two a year, whatever was we thought was feasible and just tick down the list, who’s next kind of a thing. And because it was, as I mentioned before, it was a line item in the federal budget. Cuyahoga Valley disturbed site restoration. And somebody fought for that. The superintendent or a congressman put that in there. And they needed the support of the folks who were paying attention to the river to say, well, we want money for erosion control in Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area to address water quality.
Arrye Rosser [00:25:32] So it was separate than the park’s budget. Or whatever it was.
David Kopchak [00:25:37] That was my understanding. So I’m not sure what else was in, what else was a line item for the park at that time. But this I read, I just remember being emphasized, this is a separate line, you know? It’s there, let’s use it.
Arrye Rosser [00:25:54] So there was a lot of- There was time pressure?
David Kopchak [00:25:57] Some time pressure. And then federal contracts are always quite a bit of effort. There was an effort at that time to hire minority contractors. And I don’t know why, but our program became one of the means for trying to employ minority contractors. One of them in particular was one of the best groups I ever worked with.
Arrye Rosser [00:26:28] Who was it?
David Kopchak [00:26:29] I’m trying- I’d have to stop and think about that name. I have to go back and look. Miller sticks in my mind, but I don’t- I’m not certain about that.
Arrye Rosser [00:26:38] That’s interesting. Were most of the contracts minority contracts?
David Kopchak [00:26:43] I think that they- A lot of them were. It was always interesting because a certain amount of that, maybe they became the general contractor an awful lot. Then there were subcontractors working for the general contractor because you still have to use local sources for equipment and materials. Kurtz Bros. showed up on a lot of sites.
Arrye Rosser [00:27:07] So were they contractors as well as the ones that took the soil out?
David Kopchak [00:27:12] Could very well, I’m sure. Absolutely. Kurtz Bros. became a supplier of topsoil. I don’t doubt that they had a role in removing some of that originally. So, you know, it was tricky. I don’t think you probably want too many war stories, but there were a few of those because it wasn’t always easy. Contracting’s not easy. And some went very well. Some were a struggle.
Arrye Rosser [00:27:40] Yeah, I can imagine. Let me go back and talk just a little bit more generally about resource management as a division. What were the priorities in the 80s, as you remember them, was the focus.
David Kopchak [00:27:56] Of course, the park was organized a little differently then. The Chief Ranger, Brian McHugh at the time was resource management and law enforcement. That’s who was linked together. So a lot of the- You mentioned the tract files. Those were the younger law enforcement type rangers who did most of those inspections, surveys, whatever, and seasonal rangers hired to do that work, usually working for law enforcement. And then resource management, we had a staff of three, you know, resource management specialist, just a basic park ranger, did water quality, oil and gas, some of the wildlife, and then myself, a soil conservationist, which is- I think there were only ever two of us in the whole park system, but- And there’s probably none now, but that’s because of the focus of the work here. So it was a small, you know, three people in one of the duplexes. And Gary Williamson. There was an effort at that time to, excuse me, have resource management specialists train and out in the parks, especially for one like Cuyahoga Valley, to identify the problems, you know, put together the planning to address it. So I just recall we all had responsibility for one or two or three of those plans. And that was- You’re always working on one of those at the time to get them composed, you know, accepted on the shelf. Gary was big on binders of plans.
Arrye Rosser [00:29:32] They’re still around, I think, all those binders. Were the plans then- It’s kind of setting up essentially the work of the division moving forward, but then were they- Were the people executing the plans, the staff, or was contractors? [crosstalk] I think maybe the wildlife one was- There may have been some- I don’t know if it was done by contract with the university. I’m being forgetful.
David Kopchak [00:30:01] Well, some of those were later that I can’t say if Gary was involved in some of those, but we began- Anytime we could work with another agency, it was one willing to help out, capable of helping out, we certainly used their expertise. Some of the original plans, you can imagine, were pretty rudimentary. It’s somebody’s first attempt to do something to address beaver or whatever. And others got more involved when they got into more serious, true restoration, large-scale planting of native grasses and forbs. I’m sure they involved. There were people to involve by that time, you know, biologists and so forth who would help out, line up volunteers, all that. You know. We weren’t doing anything like that. I had some Cub Scout groups help plant trees a few times. That’s the extent of- That’s the extent of my volunteers.
Arrye Rosser [00:31:01] I know. It’s incredible how things have changed. So you were one of three and that included the supervisor. That was Gary.
David Kopchak [00:31:09] Gary Williamson was the resource management specialist. And I always had the impression they had a pretty good training program, pretty broad, high quality training. And then it was his job to come in and set up a program. So he hired his staff of two at that time.
Arrye Rosser [00:31:28] Who’s the other person?
David Kopchak [00:31:30] Jack Galvin was the, was the one that worked with me. He was got here just ahead of me.
Arrye Rosser [00:31:36] What was his role?
David Kopchak [00:31:38] I think he was a straight park ranger. Well, we all were mostly. But he did oil on gas, water quality, maybe began to dabble in wildlife. I can’t recall exactly, but there was. Those are the two that stand out in my mind because we didn’t do any water quality until that time. So very. The simplest sampling, you know, we glean that what is. Do folks like EPA and so forth think we should be monitoring? What are we testing for? How are we- What are we doing with our data? And then we. There were some seasonals, of course, Karen at that time. Karen Boland got to know her pretty well later. That’s where I met Karen, but- And a few others. Meg Behnke replaced Jack Galvin when he left the park.
Arrye Rosser [00:32:37] Was she a seasonal person?
David Kopchak [00:32:39] Nope, she was a permanent park ranger.
Arrye Rosser [00:32:43] I forgot her name was Behnke before, but I remember her and Behnke. Yours too?
David Kopchak [00:32:47] Yep. And then- Go ahead.
Arrye Rosser [00:32:56] No, go ahead. How many sites were you involved in restoring overall? Do you have a sense of, well, largest-
David Kopchak [00:33:00] I mean I really, it’s hard to say that’s 25 years ago. But the large ones, I’m not sure there were more than 10 or whatever large ones, a lot of small ones. Because we, it’s. If you, if you went back to that plan, it identified both and again, budget allowing, we would, you know, try to address some. Some of those were kind of strange. They were so remote you had to kind of hike in. How do you get a contractor, you know, to hike in? And basically we had to take buckets of gravel sometimes to fill a small hand-dug well. No other way to do it. Couldn’t take machinery back there, odd, things like that, or hand carry out debris or some things like that that were kind of tricky.
Arrye Rosser [00:34:02] How did your work, like I’ve been reading some of the Army Corps of Engineers studies that predated the park. And then they kind of, I mean they did a lot of studies and with different focuses and published reports kind of over maybe over a ten-year period. And they were certainly interested in the soil issues. But then in their reports they kind of talk about, I mean they almost like wash their hands of their responsibility, I think, at least at that time. But I figured what you were doing was maybe picking up- Like, they identified the problems, and then you-
David Kopchak [00:34:43] Sure, that was the case.
Arrye Rosser [00:34:46] You were executing them. Do you have a sense of that relationship with Army Corps?
David Kopchak [00:34:47] I just know that we occasionally, you know, would meet with them, contact them or whatever. And mostly it was about who area of responsibility. So I mentioned before that there were road or stream bank stabilization projects on either both Riverview and A-P [Akron-Peninsula) Road and maybe some other places where the, for whatever reason that fell under the jurisdiction, probably because of the river fell under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps. That’s my recollection. And then. But I don’t doubt that when they began to put together my predecessor and Gary put together the disturbed site plan, they took whatever information they had, including the Corps studies as a starting point. Why wouldn’t you. Because some of those sites were, you know, might be 5 acres, 10 acres, 20 acres in size. Weren’t hard to see.
Arrye Rosser [00:35:49] Yeah, yeah.
David Kopchak [00:35:51] And that was just a logical starting point.
Arrye Rosser [00:35:54] How big were the large sites just in terms of acreage, you know, roughly?
David Kopchak [00:35:56] You know, I’m not aware that I had anything over 10 acres. But I’m, I’m just remembering as best I can the. I’d really have to go back and look, look more closely at them. But my first project was, was in, was Gray Quarry or Indigo Lake and that was basically just taking old sand and gravel pit. And we use the term grooming, you know, grooming the sides to make it accessible. They were high walls. There’s still some high wall out there. But making it into. To fit the landscape is best you could. And leave the feature, the water feature there, which, you know, people are very familiar with that now.
Arrye Rosser [00:36:46] Was it full of water to the extent that it is now? Like, is the water level about the same as you remember?
David Kopchak [00:36:53] Yes. To my knowledge, it has really hasn’t changed. That’s the water table.
Arrye Rosser [00:36:56] Yeah.
David Kopchak [00:36:56] So like a lot of them were-
Arrye Rosser [00:36:58] I think they were mining out under the water.
David Kopchak [00:37:01] Absolutely.
Arrye Rosser [00:37:02] Yeah.
David Kopchak [00:37:02] So, and they would have- When they were- When that was an active site, like any quarry they were pumping out. So when they abandoned it, when the park purchased it. Whether that- Whether abandonment preceded purchase, I don’t know. But by the time I got there, it was full. And we were simply addressing the sides to provide access to the public and then basically regrading the entire site, changing the access and so forth, and getting it kinda of stable. And we did some fencing for safety and seating. It was a very basic sort of project.
Arrye Rosser [00:37:38] What does it look like, landscape wise, I mean, was it just bare earth there?
David Kopchak [00:37:42] When they left it, it was because, of course, it was just. Just disturbed. Their earth moving was active and things were just left, you know, as if it was working. But we cut the slopes back to something safe. And then, you know, now you can see how the railroad and the trail over to-
Arrye Rosser [00:38:09] Over to Howe Meadow and Hale Farm.
David Kopchak [00:38:12] Hale Farm, yes, that’s all been incorporated in there now. And it’s a popular scene now.
Arrye Rosser [00:38:18] Which site were you to taking down? The side that is where we think the station was?
David Kopchak [00:38:25] Both north and south. So there’s the railroad on one side, there’s what’s left of the high wall, which was impractical to change. It’s just there. And then we just basically affected the north and south ends and made them accessible so people could fish.
Arrye Rosser [00:38:43] So what we see is the west wall where the trail goes to Howe Meadow. That was the high level that was on the other sides as well.
David Kopchak [00:38:54] Yeah, you can picture that coming back down to the valley. So that knob there was probably a knob. I call it a knob. That’s the way sand and gravel pits or sand and gravel accumulations, naturally in the valley, they tend to be sort of knobs and that the glaciers left that became the site worthwhile to extract.
Arrye Rosser [00:39:19] And so it would have, like, tapered off as you went to the railroad. But you guys were cutting down the-
David Kopchak [00:39:27] So instead of having a high wall around it, we shaped it to have access.
Arrye Rosser [00:39:32] And was that, like, rock that was coming out or is all just loose material?
David Kopchak [00:39:37] Loose material. Soil. Just call it soil.
Arrye Rosser [00:39:39] Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It’s amazing. I’ve never actually heard too much about the restoration of that property.
David Kopchak [00:39:50] It was fairly simple. That one was simple.
Arrye Rosser [00:39:53] But it’s interesting to think that the topography of the land isn’t what it was at that time. What were some of the other big projects that you had?
David Kopchak [00:40:02] Well, and I hope I have the names right.
Arrye Rosser [00:40:05] That’s okay. They probably changed. Every name in the Valley sort of changed.
David Kopchak [00:40:08] A-P Quarry, which I don’t remember much about - I’m not sure we did very much there - was on the other side of the valley.
Arrye Rosser [00:40:14] Oh that one I remember reading something about. That’s north of Beaver marsh on the AP roadside, I think.
David Kopchak [00:40:23] I think so. But that’s one I have to go
Arrye Rosser [00:40:26] back and look at like where the goat farm is now.
David Kopchak [00:40:31] Could be.
Arrye Rosser [00:40:32] It’s, I think, maybe between A-P Road and the river, somewhere up in there.
David Kopchak [00:40:41] My sites tended to be both large and small borrow sites. So there’s one by Columbia Road, for instance, that I don’t know. Someone- Someone had done a really, really small-scale extraction of material. That’s why they’re called borrow. They took that material, sold it off or went to a road construction. Snowville Quarry, same thing. It was- I’m not- I honestly don’t know what was quarried out of there. I assume sand and gravel. But then it was simply left in the state. It was-
Arrye Rosser [00:41:15] And that was bare hillside. This is on Snowville Road on the south side not far from the intersection with or not far from the intersection. It’s Riverview Road on the south side.
David Kopchak [00:41:26] I recall doing something there and I think they’ve subsequently- Kim Norley and what we call TAPS people finished the project there. My recollection is now- But basically a lot of that was stabilizing the site. It was actively eroding. What could you do to stabilize it? I’m not sure we ever finished. At least we didn’t. A really comprehensive plan about reshaping that area, putting it to some use. There’s probably still potential there but. And then we had some sites up north. In Texaco, sticks in my mind. I’m pretty sure that’s Pleasant Valley Road. The floodplain, part of the floodplain at Pleasant Valley Road where that was fly ash. So we either had a cut slope to kind of basically do what we could to get it reseeded, vegetated. Same thing with Pleasant Valley Road, get it covered and get some vegetation growing. Station Road, there was one up north off a rock side whose name I don’t recall right this minute. On the west side of the railroad. We did try to do some work there.
Arrye Rosser [00:42:44] That one may have been- I mean, there was quarrying at, you know, kind of- [crosstalk]
David Kopchak [00:42:48] It was borrowed.
Arrye Rosser [00:42:48] The Rockside Area. The name came from the quarrying. Do you remember, were you involved in riverbank stabilization?
David Kopchak [00:43:00] Not really. You know, that issue became, you know, came to prominence primarily when the park started to do the towpath and the railroad. And that was at the tail end of my tenure here. They had just gotten started with opening up the towpath. So the clearing, grading, the pavement, call it pavement, the limestone. That work which was largely done by park staff at the time, Woody Howitt and crew. I’m sure you know some of that story.
Arrye Rosser [00:43:40] I started the year that the towpath opened. So I remember. And that was in October. I started in January. So I have that memory of them working on it, but I don’t have a perfect knowledge of when it began. I would have said they worked on it for- It was at least a year, if not more.
David Kopchak [00:43:58] Well, it had to be right around ’90, in that time period, because, again, it was, as I was leaving, they had put those plans together.
Arrye Rosser [00:44:07] What year did you leave?
David Kopchak [00:44:08] ’92. And as you can imagine, that was quite an effort. There was, you know, some of the towpath was intact, wasn’t maintained, but it was easy to spot. But it needed, obviously, work and improvement. Drainage, tree removal, vegetation removal, and then grading to some degree, and then the pavement put down and park staff did just an outstanding job with that. Pretty impressive.
Arrye Rosser [00:44:44] Do you remember the riverbanks that people using the cars at Jaite- [inaudible]
David Kopchak [00:44:51] I do. And I always knew that was a- It was always an iconic sort of a photo. If you wanted to say something bad or show a problem area, you’d take a photo of those cars. And of course, it was a cheap way for someone, you know, farmers or any landowners who live on a river, if you’re using the land, then you. You care about what the river’s doing. You deal with flooding and you deal with bank erosion or whatever’s going on. And those landowners don’t have. Typically have a lot of money to do anything with it. So they look for cheap ways to preserve their land. Someone offers them- This is where you end up with broken concrete and junk. And what’s cheaper than a free junk car?
Arrye Rosser [00:45:38] I know. Apparently they removed all the fluids and the oil gas.
David Kopchak [00:45:43] Maybe.
Arrye Rosser [00:45:43] That’s what I heard it from somebody else that they drained everything out.
David Kopchak [00:45:47] You’d like to think so, but you put something like that in the water and to some degree it’ll sit there and it’ll accumulate a little sediment and it might just, you know, in some people’s thinking, stabilize the bank. Not the best long-term solution, but certainly, certainly not something you want in a park.
Arrye Rosser [00:46:12] Did you- Were there specific, like, partner organizations that you worked with a lot and then the work that you were doing, or was it mostly just all with contractors?
David Kopchak [00:46:21] Well, we had a relationship actually with- I might have to get a water here. But as soon as I came on, we were- The agency I came from was under contract with the park for a little bit of work and they did- For instance, that’s where I mentioned before, Goose Feather and Horseshoe Ponds. So U.S. Department of Agriculture - because the Cuyahoga Valley had no engineers on staff - had a landscape architect that might have been the most technical person on staff that I can recall. So they contracted with U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service and the engineer at that time, Tom Jones, put together plans, engineering plans for the reclamation of those two ponds. So that, that was one of my first projects, was to oversee that, that contract and those were, you know, we replaced the spillway pipes, regraded the ponds, cleaned them out.
Arrye Rosser [00:47:33] So did you drain them completely?
David Kopchak [00:47:35] They were drained. In fact, there’s some-
Arrye Rosser [00:47:36] Were they already drained when you started?
David Kopchak [00:47:38] No, it was our job to get them drained. So we- My guess is I probably had the contractor on site during that phase of the project. And it was- [laughs] I laugh because I was, since I had the contract or the responsibility for the reclamation project. Gary wanted us, Gary Williamson wanted us to save the fish. Well, we really weren’t equipped to do much with that. But I had a couple of the stuff, seasonal rangers from law enforcement, Mark Polona, Rose Aikens, John Leonarduzzi and one or two others. Maybe we just went in with nets and garbage, plastic garbage cans and caught as many fish as we could. And we probably delivered them dead to wherever we put them because we weren’t equipped.
Arrye Rosser [00:48:38] Equipped, yeah.
David Kopchak [00:48:39] But we made an effort, we made a valiant effort to save some fish.
Arrye Rosser [00:48:44] Where did they go?
David Kopchak [00:48:46] Whatever other ponds were close by. I’d have to stop and think where we took them. Could have been Conrad, you know, or- It was one of those sort of almost last-minute kind of things. By the way, Dave, what are you gonna do with the fish these days? I look at that and I say, because I work with impoundments, water impoundments. Now if we have to drain them, we don’t move the fish. The herons and the raccoons and whatever else will have a feast. So that’s typically how you might deal with it these days. But anyway, that was if you talk to those folks that was one of their fond memories of the ’80s was getting to help out, you know, wading into muck, trying to catch fish with- With whatever. Whatever.
Arrye Rosser [00:49:45] That’s crazy. Well, let’s take a quick break.
David Kopchak [00:49:47] Sure.
Arrye Rosser [00:49:48] And we can stop the recording real quick. [recording stops and resumes] You ready? Yeah. So this is, going back in the mid-’80s, the park had mostly just inherited some- Well, inherited the Virginia Kendall area, but there wasn’t really amenities for visitors.
David Kopchak [00:50:11] So you know, I can recall obviously people were familiar with the VK area and Virginia Kendall and sort of the southeast portion of the park, which was basically a metropark area that could simply be brought up to speed and continue its recreational use. Well up further north you go or west in the park there wasn’t much until you got up to Cleveland Metropark areas up north. So just as you mentioned, some of the what would have been farm ponds or just a homeowner type pond. Two of them were Horseshoe and Goose Feather. Don’t ask me where the names. Well, Horseshoe looks like a horseshoe. But they were determined to be of sufficient size and so forth that could be used for recreational purposes. People could picnic there, fish and so forth. My boss liked to fish and I think he enjoyed pushing that recreational use. But anyway they needed work like any small pond like that. And that was where the contract with USDA came in to give us some help with engineering plans. And then those were brought up to standards and still there today.
Arrye Rosser [00:51:35] So they were sort of seen as low-hanging fruit to quickly-
David Kopchak [00:51:37] Something easy to do.
Arrye Rosser [00:51:39] Provide some visitor amenities.
David Kopchak [00:51:43] Put a parking lot in and people could, could have someplace to go.
Arrye Rosser [00:51:46] And the trails were being built at the same time?
David Kopchak [00:51:49] You know, some of those were-
Arrye Rosser [00:51:51] I don’t have a great sense of the trail history in the park, actually.
David Kopchak [00:51:54] Me neither, except that like anything else it was on, at that time TAPS, their list of things to do and it they got ticked off the list as best they could as well. So a lot of the trails were something that’s already there and they’re either improved or abandoned or modified or whatever.
Arrye Rosser [00:52:17] Yes, I know some were completely new. I was thinking about Oak Hill. Did you work on Sylvan Park, which would be [crosstalk] the one behind Oak Hill?
David Kopchak [00:52:27] Now that you mentioned it, I did something there. I’d have to stop and think what we did there.
Arrye Rosser [00:52:34] But I know all that. I remember when like the Plateau Trail was built.
David Kopchak [00:52:53] This is good. I- Again, we did something at Sylvan. Oak Hill was getting developed. Wasn’t much there.
Arrye Rosser [00:53:03] Yeah, that would have been- Earth Lore would have been there at that time. I’m not sure when that got started, to be honest, but it would have been in your era I think.
David Kopchak [00:53:15] The only thing I can tell you about-
Arrye Rosser [00:53:17] That was the predecessor to Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center.
David Kopchak [00:53:19] When- Jeff Maugans was the one person that, at that time, did all of that by himself. He was an amazing resource as far as a park naturalist, biologist, or whatever he was. He was the one. He just knew everything, and you wanted to know something about the area or just generally about wildlife or plants or anything, Jeff was the guy to talk to. I enjoyed visiting with him.
Arrye Rosser [00:53:59] Let me go back and ask about- Do you remember anything about the Dover site? The site that’s adjacent. What we think of Dover Lake water park adjacent to Brandywine Ski Resort off of Vaughn Road.
David Kopchak [00:54:15] I don’t remember a lot of detail except that I’m sure we looked at it. We were probably beginning to try to address it. I recall some drainage issues over that way that we try to deal with in the meantime because that drainage crossed the canal and the towpath area. And we did some minor, tried to do some minor improvements over there but we hadn’t tackled the larger property. I think that was about the same time we started to pay attention to Jaite Mill and I had a-
Arrye Rosser [00:50:00] Which was still up, but I don’t know- [crosstalk]
David Kopchak [00:54:51] It was still there- [crosstalk]
Arrye Rosser [00:54:52] When it came down.
David Kopchak [00:54:53] And a frequent target of vandals. And the- My part in that I vaguely recall having the contract to try to remove what was the strangest material we had in the park. To my mind that was a paper mill. And they took in waste paper as part of their basic resource for what they were manufacturing there. Well it came in in bundles and those bundles were just waste paper wired together. So they had a constant source of this wire. What do you do with that? They shoved it out the back and there was a- Again the Valley has all these low areas. What do you do with a low area? You fill it with something, and I can’t even begin to manage or imagine the size of that pile. And of course it sat there long enough if you can to get- The vegetation would grow over it until we decided to try to get it out f there.
Arrye Rosser [00:56:14] Like roughly, like, if you compare it to a school bus or something, what was-
David Kopchak [00:56:20] Number of school buses.
Arrye Rosser [00:56:21] Wow.
David Kopchak [00:56:22] And I- [crosstalk] Corroding, rusting wire, like spaghetti. And it- How do you-
Arrye Rosser [00:56:33] Funny they didn’t recycle it for the metal value.
David Kopchak [00:56:38] I don’t know. I- I asked- I can’t remember an awful lot about it except that we were trying to figure out how to manage it. What do you do with a pile of metal spaghetti? Because what- And I think- My best recollection is that I worked on at least part of that. And I don’t remember if we finished it. I just can’t recall.
Arrye Rosser [00:57:04] Yeah, that’s crazy.
David Kopchak [00:57:07] Because we didn’t know what was there until we started to get into it. And then you couldn’t- There was no end to it. And what do you do with it? You grab it with a track hoe and you have a mass that you can’t do anything with. So I don’t know. I can’t recall all the details of how that was eventually dealt with, but it was one of the more interesting sites we had.
Arrye Rosser [00:57:28] You were telling me, too, just about dealing with oil and gas, and cisterns, wells, a lot of-
David Kopchak [00:57:34] Well, there was, you know, money, regular money, regular funds to deal with abandoned oil and gas wells. So those just came up as they were acquired. And it was Jack Alvin’s job. Routinely. They were fairly simple. There was a procedure for properly. Excuse me, capping those and taking out the lane and the equipment, so forth. And Jack probably already also did the drilled wells. I remember getting stuck with a few of those maybe when Jack left. But you know, where the casing is removed and materials put down to seal the well. And the site’s reclaimed. So that was a fairly routine and regular occurrence as residences, as homes came out or home sites came out, those were addressed.
Arrye Rosser [00:58:30] So is it like the demo contractor took the buildings out, but they left a hole in the ground where the well was?
David Kopchak [00:58:38] Well, and some of them, the ones that smaller ones I got stuck with were- Those were much older home sites. Maybe the building was gone, but the remnants of the homesite was there. And the really old ones, they wouldn’t have had a drilled well, they would have had a dug well well or a simple cistern. And the structure’s long gone, but the cistern or the well is there. So then it’s just the hole. And we just used clean material to fill it. These things weren’t deep. It was more the safety hazard than a water quality issue. But there were a lot of those.
Arrye Rosser [00:59:17] We talked about this before we started recording, but I got this photo that I got on eBay from May 16, 1989. It is a Press photo, it looks like that I purchased. And it is labeled Mid Cuyahoga River Tour, Cuyahoga River Remedial Action Plan Coordinating Committee. And it’s got a picture of you in there doing what looks like some benthic sampling in a creek. And I wonder what you could remember about that.
David Kopchak [00:59:54] Just that thankfully you’ve got some names on there. So it was myself and a seasonal ranger, Kelly Lucas. And we’re kick seining and I think that’s a side. A small channel, tributary, to the river. And we’re at the railroad crossing. My recollection is that’s along Riverview Road, not far-
Arrye Rosser [01:00:18} You said Columbia Road area.
David Kopchak [01:00:19] Maybe Columbia Road, because that would have been a place where the train could stop. They wanted to bring the RAP [Remedial Action Plan] Committee. I recall we met. That meeting continued at Happy Days through the day.
Arrye Rosser [01:00:33] Was it new? Was it kind of part of the formation of the RAP? I don’t remember when the RAP started.
David Kopchak [01:00:38] I think they were. Me neither. But I think that they were established, somewhat established. But they obviously needed to get some familiarity with the, with the park. And it was fairly well covered by the, by the press. And as I was mentioning before, part of my job was to get one of the reporters there because she had missed the train and had to get her there to do the interviews and make sure the film got done. That was Kelly O’Donnell. I can’t tell you any of the other ones there, but we gave them a 10-minute demonstration on kick seining.
Arrye Rosser [01:01:19] Yeah.
David Kopchak [01:01:19] And I’m sure we, we caught some nymphs or whatever and showed them.
Arrye Rosser [01:01:24] And they all looked at them.
David Kopchak [01:01:25] They were all fascinated and- Oh my goodness.
Arrye Rosser [01:01:28] And yeah, yeah, we see in the photograph what looks like two television cameras there. So that’s kind of cool. Did you guys have interactions with the press and things like that? Was there a lot of interest in the new park getting formed?
David Kopchak [01:01:42] I think the park was certainly in the paper, probably more often for something controversial, you know, some story with land acquisition or someone grumbling about something. But. But park was new and you know, when you’re the new, the new entity, it’s a positive and a negative. There were, I’m sure, jurisdictional issues over the years. Well, whose road is that? Whose responsibility? Those projects over the years for road maintenance and improvements have been ongoing concerns for superintendents for decades. But those were early years. Lots of issues regarding land acquisition, positive and negative. And you know, we mentioned before a lot of the sites that were acquired were problem sites like Krejci Dump. Well, that was in the news quite often.
Arrye Rosser [01:02:48] Yeah. Tell Me more about Krejci, what you remember about that.
David Kopchak [01:02:51] Well, the-
Arrye Rosser [01:02:52] Was it still an active dump at that time or the park acquired it?
David Kopchak [01:02:57] I recall that it was. This is just a recollection of conversations, but it might have still been active when the park was trying to close it. Close it by acquiring it. And it had a nickname, at least in my recollection of Silica Valley, because it wasn’t just the hazardous waste, which is what Krejci Dump is known more for now, but just huge amounts of. Back then we called it rubbish. So you had garbage and you had rubbish. Rubbish was the non burnables, glasses and cans, you know, and I assume it was the private haulers for trash removal. That’s Mr. Krejci. The Krejci family operated a place for them to bring that. And they. They just simply would fill a ravine here and fill a ravine here and just keep going. And they were deep ravines. They would take a lot of material. It was just atrocious. But he eventually learned that there was a market for taking a barrel of this and a barrel of that. Didn’t matter what was in the barrel. And it became a place to conveniently get rid of that kind of stuff. And of course that became- As the park got into it, you began to identify, you know, this is serious. It’s not just a dump, it’s a hazardous waste dump. And then that effort while I was still here, they had begun that effort to have that analyzed and that’s when the fencing went up. And of course all the stories in the newspaper about what the park was dealing with. Why does the park own a hazardous waste dump? And well, the answer was to stop it at the time.
Arrye Rosser [01:04:57] And I think now we understand that the Jaite Mill site is, like, way more hazardous than we’d- [inaudible]
David Kopchak [01:05:02] Oh really? Oh my gosh.
Arrye Rosser [01:05:04] It’s up there with Krejci.
David Kopchak [01:05:07] Probably, probably PCBs, but anyway.
Arrye Rosser [01:05:10] Anyway, yeah, so going back there, just wrap up a little bit, do you have any other memories of co-workers or the park staff? Generally people that it might be nice to just capture a little bit of the flavor of who was working in the park at the time and how the divisions worked together or didn’t.
David Kopchak [01:05:31] Well, they were organized differently. Every bungalow had a chief in it. TAPS was on the end there. Resource Management, I think I recall, was maybe the second bungalow from headquarters anyway. But the administrative officer was Roy Beasley. The superintendent when I came on was Lou Albert. John Debo just came on while I was in and things really changed when John came on. I think Lou Albert was still in the acquisition stage. I think I look at John Debo coming on while in the development stage where you- Let’s develop Towpath and the amenities. [crosstalk]
Arrye Rosser [01:06:21] My time here is sort of basically overlapped with John’s.
David Kopchak [01:06:23] And the kind of a little sort of a sideline issue almost is I got to deal with the active farms. We only had a handful of active farmers. They either had owned the farm, were operating the farm or they rented fields. They were neighbors that were willing to farm the fields that were left in the park. And it was my job to work with them on herbicide. What the park would allow for herbicide treatment in their operations. It’s interesting that. Not sure the park was that friendly to those guys. One by one they were. They generally left. It was tough. It wasn’t easy to farm in the valley. And then the parks park kind of changed their philosophy and began to invite people in. Different scale of farming of course, different kind of farming. But it was interesting to see the change where we didn’t make it so easy on the original folks we worked with back in the ’80s.
Arrye Rosser [01:07:41] Was it like we had bought the land and they were still farming on the land as part of-
David Kopchak [01:07:46] They would rent it. So we didn’t charge them much rent but we had a lot of restrictions on what they could do and that didn’t work very well. I think the park looked, didn’t look favorably. There was a livestock operation, some beef cattle down on A-P Road. If I thought long enough I could think of that gentleman’s name. He was one of the original farmers still on the land. He didn’t own that farm but he lived there. But my recollection is the park didn’t want that lifestyle. It was old-style grazing, bare feedlots, that kind of thing. But now they’d love to have some, some livestock done properly in the park. But those, those guys, since I had worked in agriculture then I got that job to, to work with them. I enjoyed working with them.
Arrye Rosser [01:08:38] What were some of their concerns at the time? What were their-
David Kopchak [01:08:41] Just getting enough land operating as they saw what they needed to do versus what the park. We would. We didn’t want to see as much plowing, didn’t want to see as much herbicide use. So we would review that. That was tough to do. You know, if you want to do conventional farming, which is what they were interested in, well then you had conventional herbicides. Hard to do it. There wasn’t that much organic farming done and those folks weren’t going to do it. They weren’t organic farmers. So there was like just some difficulty making that work.
Arrye Rosser [01:09:18] Yeah, of course. Do you have any particular memories of any individual farmers or anything like that?
David Kopchak [01:09:27] Well, I really have to think about the names. There was a gentleman that had horses.
Arrye Rosser [01:09:32] Those would have been the Pittingers, maybe-
David Kopchak [01:09:37] I don’t know. He was on the west side of the Valley. That’s my recollection.
Arrye Rosser [01:09:41] Think this would have been off of Quick Road where the-
David Kopchak [01:09:45] I’m familiar with that site.
Arrye Rosser [01:09:46] Humane Society- It’s called Blackacre now [but] was the Pittinger farm. They were Morgan horses.
David Kopchak [01:09:54] Mm-hmm. This was a vet over toward Richfield who did some farming for us, tried to do some farming for us. Didn’t always get much done. And then gentleman down on the AP road was John. And I can’t remember his last name. I’m sure he’s. He’s gone now. But he was one of the more old style farmers that.
Arrye Rosser [01:10:17] He’s the livestock farmer.
David Kopchak [01:10:19] He was livestock farmer. And that barn is still there. I’m not sure the home is still there.
Arrye Rosser [01:10:25] Is that the Point Barn?
David Kopchak [01:10:26] I’d have to look.
Arrye Rosser [01:10:27] Where the goats are now?
David Kopchak [01:10:30] It could very well be, but not certain about that. But as far as staff goes, of course that goes back to some of the original folks like Sylvia, Dee. In maintenance as well. Of course, Brian McHugh, chief ranger. Einar Johnson and Bob Martin, the two assistant chiefs.
Arrye Rosser [01:10:52] They were here when I first started. I just have a vague memory. I think Einar probably retired really quick, quickly. And Bob was in charge of the Environmental Education Center contract.
David Kopchak [01:11:04] Mm-hmm. And then Gary Pace, one of the law enforcement, and Tom- Oh shoot. The South District- Gary was North District Ranger. Tom- I’ll think of it. Anyway, South District Ranger. And of course the Rangers were always a good group to work with. We shared the building in North District with Gary Pace. Some of the Comm Center. [01:11:36]
Arrye Rosser [01:11:35] Some of the law enforcement group.
David Kopchak [01:11:37] Law enforcement, yep. And then-
Arrye Rosser [01:11:39] Was the Communication Center just getting started?
David Kopchak [01:11:43] It had always been there. So there at Coonrad. As far as I know, it was always there, always been in there. Dave Dornfeld was kind of a safety Jack of all trades sort of a ranger under Brian, but a long-term employee. Cheryl Allender. Terrific.
Arrye Rosser [01:12:04] I remember her. She did contracting.
David Kopchak [01:12:05] No, she did- She was Brian’s secretary.
Arrye Rosser [01:12:09] Cheryl Allender. I’m thinking of Cheryl Johnson.
David Kopchak [01:12:12] Yes.
Arrye Rosser [01:12:12] Yeah. She was a contractor.
David Kopchak [01:12:14] Joyce Stumbo was the contracting officer.
Arrye Rosser [01:12:15] Yes, she was very good.
David Kopchak [01:12:18] I had a lot of interaction with her.
Arrye Rosser [01:12:22] She did the high-end, the high-dollar-amount contracting.
David Kopchak [01:12:25] Yes. So the larger ones that I did, I worked with her and those were my recollection those were always. They weren’t bid contracts, they were negotiated contracts. I didn’t do much negotiating. That was all done over my level. But they made that difficult to do. But I think- And more expensive. But anyway. Sheba Harris.
Arrye Rosser [01:12:55] Yep. In budget and.
David Kopchak [01:12:57] And before that she was I think worked with Joyce in another long time employee. John Reynolds. Kind of went in and out of Interp and IT and so forth. But a good resource person.
Arrye Rosser [01:13:12] He was in cultural arts.
David Kopchak [01:13:13] Yes.
Arrye Rosser [01:13:14] Time management [inaudible] early festivals or-
David Kopchak [01:13:17] Yes.
Arrye Rosser [01:13:17] Concerts and things like that.
David Kopchak [01:13:20] You mentioned festivals. Of course, when it was the folk festival or the, whatever the later name of-
Arrye Rosser [01:13:27] Heritage Festival.
David Kopchak [01:13:28] Heritage Festival? Those were a blast because it was sort of an all hands on deck and resource management got to help park cars. You know, but-
Arrye Rosser [01:13:38] I was information tent in ’93, I believe.
David Kopchak [01:13:42] There you go. So that was one of the better duties that you got on occasion.
Arrye Rosser [01:13:51] Yeah. And how did you meet your wife Karen?
David Kopchak [01:13:54] Karen came on as a seasonal and, well, at least obviously in resource management. Maybe some other divisions. But I might have helped train her, not train her, but we might have shared some of the water quality duties. While we were trying to manage beaver, we partnered. I got to partner with, with the young man who did resource management for Cleveland Metroparks here in Brecksville. And we did some imaginative, for lack of a better word, culvert management to sort of live with the beaver but reduce their damage. So we did some hand built wooden culvert structures and well, so Ed was the- Ed Kilder was the gentleman from Cleveland Metro Parks and Karen was one of the recruits to help us haul the stuff back because these sites are always remote and it was just north of headquarters here that we would haul stuff in there to put these structures in in our attempt to kind of live with the beaver. I can remember spending a day, part of a day trying to unplug a culvert. And we don’t know if the beaver did it or who did it, but there was actually a railroad tie. We eventually pulled a railroad tie out of a culvert. We don’t know how it got in there, but that’s what was blocking the- I can’t imagine a beaver or-
Arrye Rosser [01:15:45] Hauling a railroad tie?
David Kopchak [01:15:46] But maybe it floated. Anyway, that was an adventure. There’s a long story about how we got that out of there, but that’s too technical. That’s where I met Karen and once I left the Park Service I kept in contact with people and Karen and I started the date and that worked out pretty well.
Arrye Rosser [01:16:08] Yeah. Yeah. And for the record, Karen is now the Superintendent’s secretary. But I’ve known her for many years in interpretation and cultural worlds. Well, that’s just wonderful. Do you have any other things that we might have not covered in your recollections from the past?
David Kopchak [01:16:24] Just the things that you probably shouldn’t put on tape.
Arrye Rosser [01:16:27] You can tell me some of them. I think I hear from other staff that it was, it was kind of crazy of all the different things that were happening in the ’80s, it used to be very interesting.
David Kopchak [01:16:43] You certainly knew everybody because the staff was smaller. And you of course, like any government, you always had to do certain things a certain way. So you know, my gosh, if you had to get something delivered or just get your truck serviced, well, we had a, we had a mechanic, Bill, can’t remember his last name right this minute, but that was always an adventure to go up and meet Bill and get your truck serviced or God knows what else. And then the maintenance guys, maintenance was always, always seemed to be the best guys around, you know, Woody Howitt and some of those…
Arrye Rosser [01:17:22] I still see Woody Howitt sometimes.
David Kopchak [01:17:24] You know, that, you know, they just knew everything you, you needed to know how to do something. You saw them everywhere because they were fixing something on a building. Plumbing, carpentry, painting, plastering. You know, I think one of the best sort of memories I have is the work that those folks did on places like Canal Visitor Center and some of the rehabs that are now Park Service structures. That work wasn’t contracted always. It was a lot of it done by park staff. Seems to me that was some of the best work done. And it’s, you know, we’re lucky to have had those folks over the years.
Arrye Rosser [01:18:08] The first sort of big inter-project was what we think of as Canal Exploration Center. Now it was Canal Visitor Center. There had previously been a Canal Visitor Center at a slightly different location in a non-historic building.
David Kopchak [01:18:25] Exactly. Which you, if you saw that building, you say what in the world was the Park Service doing there? Except that, that’s, that was what was available. Didn’t look like a park facility. Obviously it needed to come out, but it was what they could do. So you sort of made do with what you had available.
Arrye Rosser [01:18:42] So you would have probably been here just, just as [crosstalk] Canal Visitor Center was opening.
David Kopchak [01:18:47] Yes.
Arrye Rosser [01:18:47] It would have been ’89, I believe.
David Kopchak [01:18:50] Yeah. And I, at least I saw that structure before it was ever restored. And it’s remarkable, you know what they were able to accomplish there.
Arrye Rosser [01:18:59] Yeah.
David Kopchak [01:19:00] So.
Arrye Rosser [01:19:01] And now we just put in all-new exhibits a couple years ago. So its whole life cycle, it’s come back again. It’s amazing, too. All right, well, I have- Any, any parting shots?
David Kopchak [01:19:13] I guess- I don’t think so. I’m sure I forgot something, but that’s all right. May have forgotten more than I-
Arrye Rosser [01:19:22] It’s hard to go back and remember. I think you did a great job, and thank you so much for your time.
David Kopchak [01:19:26] Sure. I hope it was some of some use.
Arrye Rosser [01:19:29] Yes. Thank you very much.
David Kopchak [01:19:31] Okay.
Arrye Rosser [01:19:33] Thank you.
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