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- [S2820] Public Member Trees 2024, Weber Family Tree LW Larry Weber / Jasper Earl Torrey (108) facts 20240518GHLn- /cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1030&h=412289656060&indiv=try.
Record for Jasper Earl Torrey (108) facts
20240518GHLn-
Weber Family Tree LW Larry Weber
Jasper Earl Torrey 1913-1991
BIRTH 3 JANUARY 1913 • Ceres Township, McKean, Pennsylvania,
DEATH 8 JULY 1991 • Obi, Clarksville, Allegany, New York,
/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1030&h=412289656060&indiv=try
Record for Jasper Earl Torrey (108) facts
20240518GHLn-
Weber Family Tree LW Larry Weber
Jasper Earl Torrey 1913-1991
BIRTH 3 JANUARY 1913 • Ceres Township, McKean, Pennsylvania,
DEATH 8 JULY 1991 • Obi, Clarksville, Allegany, New York,
/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1030&h=412289656060&indiv=try
- [S2028] FaceBook- Potter McKean Genealogy.
20240518GHLn-
FB Potter McKean Genealogy
Thom Torrey May 11, 2024
· Jasper Torrey and the CCC
There have recently been a few posts re the CCC on thIs site so I thought I'd share an essay I posted on another site a while back. It's rather long for a Facebook post, I hope not too long. It's about my dad who was born on Kings Run Road in Ceres and lived a couple times in Shinglehouse after he and my mom married in 1933.
I came across an article a while back that talked about the Civilian Conservation Corp, better known as the CCC, and thought about how very few people are still alive who were part of the CCC and wondered if younger generations had knowledge of the organization. It’s with that in mind that I write the following
On March 31, 1933, with the U.S. unemployment rate over 24%, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure passed by Congress providing for emergency conservation work in the nation’s forests and parks. The organization created, the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), was run by military officers and the mission was twofold… develop our national parks and forests as well as put young men to work during the Great Depression.
On May 19, 1933, at Fort Niagara, NY, young someday-to-be-my-dad, Jasper Torrey, enlisted in the CCC. He was 20 years old. To enlist he had to fudge his enlistment papers because the requirements to join the CCC at the time were that an individual had to be an unemployed single male between the age of 18 and 25. That wasn’t the case with my dad. He hit the age and gender requirements but he and mom had married three months earlier, in February.
A CCC enlistee’s monthly salary was $30, $25 of which was mandated to be sent back home to help their families. Because Dad was “officially” single per CCC records, his $25 monthly wage was sent directly to his mother rather than to my mom, an arrangement that sometimes caused friction between my grandmother and my mom. Why was that? Because each month grandma took what my mom considered to be an excessive share of Dad’s earnings before passing the rest on to my mom. The reason grandma gave for taking this approach was that mom sometimes stayed with grandma while Dad was in Montana. Also, I don’t think grandma was pleased that my mom was four months pregnant … with my brother Dick … when mom and dad married. Family dynamics.
After four weeks of “boot” training at Fort Niagara in Niagara Falls, Dad and many other New York State enlistees boarded a war train bound for Glacier National Park. On June 18, 1933, after two long days of travel, the CCC enlistees arrived in Belton, Montana where my dad was assigned to a camp construction crew.
Attached are a couple pictures of my dad in uniform at the CCC camp in Glacier National Park. I've also included a picture of me with two friends at the eastern entrance to the Park. The first picture of my dad shows him in his work fatigues, the second picture shows him in his camp leader’s uniform.
Following is an interesting article published a few years ago in the Glacier Gazette. The article talks about the first of 1,278 CCC enlistees initially assigned to Glacier National Park, a group of young men from New York ... a group that included my dad.
From the Glacier Gazette:
“In the middle of June 1933, a group of young men from New York stepped off a train at Belton (West Glacier), Montana. They had been riding for many hours, viewing scenes different from anything they had ever seen before. All of them were under twenty-five years of age. As soon as the train stopped at the west entrance of Montana’s scenic wonder, Glacier National Park, some of the youths gathered around banjos and guitars; here and there a mascot tugged at the end of a rope. One young man optimistically shouldered a set of golf clubs, while another regretted that he had not brought his violin with him. There were, according to contemporary reports, no signs of homesickness, but bewilderment and interest in these ‘novel’ surroundings.
It was, for these young men, and thousands like them, a novel experience as well. They were the first of 1,278 recruits in the Civilian Conservation Corps to be assigned to Glacier Park. They were, indeed, the vanguard of many more who would follow during the next eight years. Their presence in Glacier Park and the conservation work they performed there is a peculiar and unstudied phenomenon in the history of the Park. Taken as a case study, it bears the imprint of a national movement at work on a local level. The hundreds of youths who participated in the emergency conservation work in this pristine setting during the years of the Great Depression helped give shape and character to a national preserve which had been in existence a scant two decades and which was still on a low rung of the administration hierarchy.
On March 31, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure passed by Congress providing for the emergency conservation work in the nation’s forests and parks. Officials selected and registered single men, age 18- 25, whose families were on the public relief rolls. The young men had to agree to allot $25 of their $30 monthly cash allowances to their families back home.
The establishment of CCC camps in Glacier meant that it was now possible to accomplish work which was greatly needed but which had been impossible under normal appropriations. Five-year plans of improvement, detailed schedules of work required of all national park areas early in the decade all aided in the accommodation of Glacier’s new reservoir of labor.
Order emerged slowly from the chaos that marked the first summer of 1933. Valuable time was consumed erecting camp buildings and installing support facilities. Some progress was made, however, on several items of importance, such as the removal of dead snags from a large area burned by the 1929 forest fire that swept through the Apgar-Lake McDonald area. Men stationed on the east side of the park embarked on a similar task of removing debris and timber from the flowage area behind Sherburne Dam near Many Glacier. Elsewhere, small work parties under the direction of park rangers, moved into the woods to grade roads, construct trails and clear auto campsites.
The list of work projects eventually completed by CCC units in Glacier is a long one. The onerous task of removing fire-killed timber from the McDonald Valley continued to occupy companies stationed in the area. By 1939 nearly 5,000 acres had been cleared, a sawmill constructed, and thousands of fence posts and telephone poles shipped by rail to the nearby Blackfeet Indian Reservation and to other CCC camps in eastern Montana.”
Even though my dad’s stint with the CCC was only a brief moment in time, the experience and impact it had on him ... and my mom ... would stay with him for life. While at Fort Niagara, shortly before leaving for Montana, as I stated earlier, dad became a father of a son, my older brother Dick. Dad didn’t get to see Dick for the first time until returning to Ceres in late September when Dick was almost five months old.
Upon returning to civilian life, dad found work in the area oil fields and was soon fully ensconced in the role of husband, father, and provider, a role he embraced for the next fifty-eight years until his death in 1991.
A few months after celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary in February of 1983, my mom died at the age of 67. Two years later, in 1985, Dad remarried to Margaret Hall and I was honored to be “Best Man” at their wedding. Dad died in 1991 at the age of 78. Margaret died in 2009 two months after celebrating her 100th Birthday.
Even though I have taken dozens of road trips around this great country over the years, it wasn’t until 2011 before I finally made it to Glacier National Park, the national wonder where my very young father briefly left his mark so many years ago. I was traveling with two of my long ago PCS high school classmates at the time, Jim Monterville and Don Chaffee (last picture). When we first pulled onto the roadway leading to the park entrance and I saw the sign that simply states “Glacier National Park”, I was ill prepared for the emotions that came over me. I was now seeing the mountains my Dad saw when he was a young man of 20 and I would soon be walking on ground he may have trod before I was born and was seeing trees (or their offspring) he may have had a hand in planting. Because the wave of emotions was so unexpected, if I had been alone I would probably have shed a tear or two. Life is so filled with good moments.
Brenda Kenealy Williams
Top contributor
Thank you for sharing.
1w
Reply
Joan Nelson Gulden Kaminski
My father also was a member of the CCC and was at Glacier National Park. I have a photo of the tents they lived in during that time. He also was with the CCC’s in Manassass VA during the winter time. He once told me it was the coldest place he ever lived in the winter time.
6d
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Penny Bosworth
Thanks for sharing. Ron's father was a member.
1d
Reply
Mike Wennin
Top contributor
Could you post it here please. Civilian Conservation Corps of North Central Pennsylvania
16h
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Tom Hardes
Wonderful history, as well as family pride! Thanks Thom Torrey for sharing!
15h
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Torrey, Jasper Thoms dad CCC FB190421ThomTorrey
20190424HAv-
Thom Torrey
April 21, 2019
CCC... My dad, Jasper Torrey, was with the first group of CCC workers to go into Glacier National Park.
If you've never been to Glacier, it's worth the trip. Pic of my dad while at CCC Camp.
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Torrey, Thom & Mrs FB230821ThomTorreypp
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Thom Torrey FBpp
August 21, 2023 ·
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Sharon Robey Smith
Love you two great picture
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Jeanne Foreman
These two are the best! I love you !????????????????
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Michelle Torrey Williams
Heart Love GIF by pikaole, GIF may contain love, cute, heart, kawaii, thanks, luv, shrimp, pikaole, finger heart, gamba, ??,… |
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1913 - 1991 (78 years)
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