Thomas Hark’s Corps experience stretches back to the federal Youth Conservation Corps, where he served as a crew leader in 1979 in Young Harris, Ga. It was an experience that changed his life. Hark applied to Minnesota’s state youth program a few years later and was hired as the camp director in 1984 and 1985.
Before his service in the Corps, Dain Spurgeon never imagined he would end up a professional firefighter. As a crew member and leader in 2010-11, he served all across Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois. Besides wildland firefighting and prescribed burning, he was busy with GIS surveying, maintaining parks and trails, planting trees, managing invasives and restoring prairies, forests, streams and shorelines.
Rachel Tooker served as a crew leader from 2008-2010 in Rochester, MN and Ames, IA, working on prescribed burning, invasive species removal, oak savannah restoration, trail maintenance and prairie restoration. Meeting and working with resource professionals and members of the Corps – who maintained great attitudes regardless of conditions and were passionate about making a difference in natural resources – was the most meaningful part of her time with the Corps.
As a crew member in Grand Marais in 1998 and a crew leader in Windom in 1999-2000, Jason Peterson served in the Corps when it operated under the wing of the Minnesota DNR. He remembers working on forest inventories, black spruce cone collection, snowmobile trail maintenance, tree planting, invasive species management and prescribed burns. He also helped Trails and Waterways staff with fishing pier installations, public boat access maintenance and development.
Conservation Corps’s newest hire is a familiar face to many in the Corps, having served on the Three Rivers crew in 2009-2010, first as a crew member and then as a crew leader, and most recently as Administrative Associate at the headquarters in St. Paul. Just this week, Nicole Skurich began a new role as Youth Outdoors! Assistant Program Manager, a brand new position added to accommodate significant expansion of the program.
As one of 30 DNR naturalist interns, Grant Carlson uses his experience from the Conservation Corps every day. Leading educational and interpretive programs in areas such as the Temperance River gorge, Carlson traverses the very trails he worked on as a Gunflint crew member in 2009 and a Tofte crew leader in 2010 during summers serving in the Corps’ Superior National Forest seasonal program.
Keegan Lund served as a crew leader in the Central district in 2003-2004, restoring shoreline, removing invasive species and constructing trails throughout the metro region and in northern Minnesota. One particularly memorable experience involved rescuing an ATV that had sunk in a bog of water and sphagnum that covered a logging road normally only used in winter when the bog is frozen.
When Taylor Scott was installing steps at Interstate State Park in 1991, he had no idea that 20 years later he would be a manager there. While serving in the Summer Youth Corps, he worked at a number of parks along the St. Croix River and the North Shore, clearing trails and installing steps and boardwalks. He found the experience especially valuable because he learned to work with people from different backgrounds and “the value of hard work at an early age.”
Neva Widner’s experience as a corps member in the Conservation Apprenticeship Academy during its inaugural year led to a quick and fortuitous opportunity. Widner served in the Carlton County Soil & Water Conservation District in the summer 2011, working directly with the District’s water resources coordinator. Her service ranged from water quality monitoring to wetland delineations to surveying streams and runoff on farms. Recently, when her former supervisor left Carlton SWCD, Widner was hired to fill the position of Water Resources Technician.
Bob Welsh makes a direct link between his service in Minnesota Conservation Corps in 1987 and his long career with the Minnesota DNR, culminating in his recent selection as manager of the state’s wildlife habitat program. He will oversee the agency’s recently realigned forest, wetland and prairie-farmland habitat programs.
Jeff Ledermann served in the Conservation Corps Minnesota from 1988-89, when it was part of the Department of Natural Resources. Working primarily on whitetail deer studies at the DNR Farmland Wildlife Research Station in Madelia, Ledermann assisted with research design, collecting and analyzing data, and writing research reports.
Lamonte (Monty) Dehn was a member of the original Civilian Conservation Corps, helping build Minnesota’s state parks in the late 1930s and early 1940s. After his CCC experience, Monty served as a Hennepin County sheriff’s detective.
Rolf Hagberg served as camp director for both the Youth Conservation Corps and Young Adult Conservation Corps when they were federal programs in the 1970s. In the late 1990s, he helped found the nonprofit “Friends of the Minnesota Conservation Corps,” which assumed operation of MCC (now Conservation Corps Minnesota) in 2003; he then served as MCC’s development director. Rolf has been a professional photographer for more than 20 years.
