8 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 46, No. 6 Featured Article D eschutes County Surveyor Kevin Samuel encouraged me to write a narrative about my experiences surveying with my Dad, Jean Wm. Hawthorne, PLS#454. I worked for him during my high school and college years of 1958 to 1968. He got his PLS in 1958 and became the first full-time private land surveyor in Central Oregon. I fell in love with surveying while attending Oregon State University majoring in civil engineering and minoring in surveying. I got my PLS in 1974, and my PE in 1984. SURVEYING WITH DAD A tribute to Jean Wm. Hawthorne, PLS #454 (1958) By John W. Hawthorne, PLS #1009 (1974) My Dad, Jean Wm. Hawthorne, earned his Professional Land Surveyor (PLS) license in October 1958, at the age of 46. At that time he was working under forester Hans Milius in the Forestry Department at Brooks Scanlon Lumber Company in Bend, Oregon. Sometime in late 1959, he quit his job there and started his fulltime surveying practice in Central Oregon as the only full-time surveyor that I know of at that time. To study for the PLS exam, he turned the milk parlor in our failed dairy into his study room and disappeared each evening. His hard work paid off. He got the highest score that year on the exam! Some background history prior to my Dad’s getting his license: My Dad was born in Ainsworth, Nebraska, on October 16, 1912. His father was a farmer. His family moved 100 miles north to Kimball, South Dakota a few years later by wagon. He rode a horse to a one-room schoolhouse that included Native Americans. School Census shows him from ages 6 to 11 in South Dakota. The family later moved to Kansas, where he graduated from Salina High School on June 4, 1929, a year early for his age. That was the beginning of the Great Depression (1929–1939). His father lost the farm and they moved to California. From 1932 to 1936, he attended Fresno State College. He initially majored in geology, but switched to mineralogy after finding that he could get work in the mining industry. My Dad left college before graduating in order to go to work. Work was precious during the Great Depression. My Dad worked as an assayer and in general mining operations in mines in Nevada from 1936 to 1938, then in Alaska, ranging from Juneau to Fairbanks, until WWII. He first learned how to survey in hardrock gold mines at the Alaska Juneau Gold Mine in Juneau, Alaska, where surveyor’s reference points are in the top of the tunnel! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska Juneau_Gold_Mining_Company). WWII began in 1941, my Dad began working for the Army Corps of Engineers at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, where he gained surveying experience in railroad construction (he later used the railroad experience at Brooks-Scanlon in laying out a new spur line at the lumber mill) and general base construction. He had an order to report for induction on April 30, 1942, but was classified 4F due to a hernia and was frozen on his job with the Corps. My Dad later went to Seattle and had the hernia repaired. On August 31, 1942, he enrolled in the Alaska Territorial Guard and was discharged on September 30, 1944, after moving to Oregon. Many Americans may not be aware of the importance of Alaska during WWII. The United States spent $1.25 billion fighting the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands. Air bases were critical, including the air base at Fort Richardson. My parents said that they saw planes that were shot up after coming back. My Dad met my Mother during WWII. She also was a civilian working for the Army Corps of Engineers, as a secretary. She was from Queens, New York and had been to Alaska prior to the John with his father’s Gurley, manufactured in 1931, which John inherited. The Gurley was already 27 years old when his father bought it. Jean Wm. Hawthorne’s high school graduation photo.
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