300414 - Topic: Fighting and Preventing Wildfires

I’m working without either a continuity or official press release for this episode, so I’m afraid I don’t have much to write about. That said, I can always find something.

Harold Sims came up with the plot for this broadcast, and George Redman was slated to write the continuity. Beyond that, I’m not sure how much of a role either man played. However, I do know that Sims lived in southern Idaho for a few years before his stint in Portland, from where he moved out to the Twin Cities to work for the Great Northern Railway. I can see Sims having sufficient knowledge of the geography of Idaho to feel comfortable ginning up this story. I can’t put my hands on it at the moment, but I swear I have some form of documentation that states this episode used Idaho as its locale.

One of the GN’s little pamphlets used to alert ticket agents and interested listeners to upcoming programs lists the following synopsis for the April 14 episode:

The destruction wrought by man’s carelessness will provide a stirring melodrama for the second April program. It will be a continuous succession of thrills culminating in a forest fire and will have as its object a lesson in fire prevention.

The Washington State Forestry Conference convened on April 16 (two days after this broadcast) and passed a resolution saluting the Great Northern Railway for its April 14 Empire Builders broadcast, in which attention was drawn to the serious hazards of human-caused wildfires. Here is the letter they sent to GN president Ralph Budd.
 

The featured speaker on this evening’s Empire Builders broadcast was, appropriately enough, the chief of the United States Forest Service, Robert Y. Stuart. During the Great War, Stuart served in France, and returned with the rank of Major.

A blurb in the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant stated that “R. Y. Stuart, head of the United States Forestry Service, will speak during the Empire Builders program over WBZ and WJZ tonight at 10:30.”



Major R. Y. Stuart. Press photo issued 3-31-1933 - Author's collection

Major Robert Y. Stuart (1883-1933) was the fourth Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, serving in that position from 1928 to October 23, 1933. It was in the spring of 1933 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Civilian Conservation Corps. One of the primary and first missions of the CCC was to help reforest the nation’s woodlands. This effort fell under the management of the US Forest Service and Major Stuart.

By the way… the reason I know the precise date of the end of his service in that office is that his career came to a very abrupt and tragic end on that day.   

I don't enjoy posting such somber information two blog submissions in a row, but the fact is, Major Stuart died that day. He fell out of his seventh floor office window in Washington, D.C. He was succeeded in the role of USFS Chief by his colleague, Ferdinand A. Silcox.