90 Years of Tomorrows: Portrait of Floyd Schmoe

90 years of tomorrows producer Jean Walkinshaw. And. This program is made possible by the subscribers of Casey 2009. Do you see that I don't have that sense of balance that I used to have 65 years ago when I started. I'll be 90 in September this year and I suppose I'm lucky to be on my feet even.

Though every day is exciting. I've never run out of something exciting to do tomorrow. In 90 years of exciting tomorrows flight Schmo has been the first park naturalist on Mt. Rainier a marine biologist a professor of forest ecology a Quaker pacifist who was a stretcher bearer in World War 1 a humanitarian relief worker in Egypt Japan and Korea. He's also written nine books. He studied both his naturalist career and marriage by snowshoeing with Ruth Hughes first wife seven miles and 4000 feet up Mt. Rainier where alone all winter they were keepers of paradise CM. Our first child was born while we were up here. I wrote my first book here and the 10 years experience we had as a guide naturalist has given me material for three other books on the same subject.

There is no better place on earth to right the bird in. The great mountain was always to be a dynamic force of Floyd's creative inspiration. There are some things that are absolute in spite of what scientists say and that was one of them I think. In describing that year in paradise flied wrote I think the most indelible memory I have of that spring in Paradise Valley is a running water just as snow and silence had dominated the design for winter. So water and the sound of water dominated the spring. The ratifiers had broken through the snow I was deliriously free. Spring brings joy from awakening. Everything happens at once. Everything is in a hurry.

I do not believe in miracles but they were happening all around us. The unborn child which we had already accepted as a member of the family. The lovely Alpine flowers which I had driven by such an urge to blossom. That they push their buds up through the snow at the edge of the snow banks. And actually bloom before the snow has melted away. These things were all natural and familiar but they were miracles enough for us. To us there was only one world. A marvelous natural world. And we too felt very much a part of it. After the winter I got the job of guiding. The Mountain. I think I had 14 notches on my sex before I hung it up. It was thrilling over there didn't think your danger until you got in a tight spot and very. Tense.

Fortunately I never was with a party that lost anyone. We carried her skis up and literally tumbled down through devil's dip. I've left a few scars on those trees myself. I still don't quite know what's lost. Russia was yet another 10 15 years for my last trip. And. After 10 years on Mt. Rainier a fly decided to expand his understanding of plants of

the land to creatures of the sea. And his studies took him to the San Juan Islands. I don't know of any other place in the world where you. Get a hello. Islands. And so interesting to me a biologist or. National Laboratory. For his master's thesis on marine biology if I'd wanted to take on a lot of movies back this was 30 years before Cousteau and even before William Beebe in order to get underwater pictures I hit upon this idea of building. What I call the underwater observation post a big concrete chimney weighted down with port life in the side and we went in from the top and down the ladder. We watched the world go by. Our young daughter youngest daughter Ruth and I was a baby then and then some

time living in this thing 10 feet in the water. This or I think first among the first underwater Birchers films in color. That. Were ever made. Several years later rebuilding a house with a. Window in the bottom and a really good ship right in our living room looked down on the free. And the. Home that. Burned. I wrote this book. For the island. Barnicle is a weird beast who apparently has traded any chance of advancement for some security. After a brief muse during which it lives in a footloose and fancy free manor he suddenly seeks out a place of safety glues his head to the rock and builds himself a windowless fort from which he can never hope to escape. A typical crab on the other hand is able to move about but is always on the defensive for real

or imagined animals. If he's not very bright it's like you Leslie. Otherwise his life might be unbearable. The charming San Juan Islands is not just any one stupendous scenic feature. Rather it is in the synthesis of smaller things. The ground appeared to be covered by fallen needles but when we looked closer we found a number of fascinating shade tolerant plants. Between the mosque covered logs with the orchid coral root which grow upon a fungus methane litter and finds enough food for its uses without the need of manufacturing any wood zone. So here we find the evidence of community and one organisms need for another. Even among the lonely

planets there is this leaning toward which is good for all. Oh. There's that sunlight coming through the earth told Krishna reminds me of. Rays of light sometimes through the whole windows of the European you know. I was thinking the other day. The whole community of life as a cooperative organism before. Perhaps the wooden beings are the least inclined to be cooperative. Ya during the Second World War when the Japanese attacked Pearl

Harbor and the United States government rounded up Japanese citizens in this country to put them in internment camps. Floyd quit his teaching at the university to work full time trying to ease their dislocation and distress. Most of them were second generation had never been to Japan many of them couldn't even speak Japanese language. And still they were branded as enemy. And then the 945 and they were able to come back to the west coast. There was an even bigger job of helping them re-establish themselves. They had lost their homes they've lost their land. There was a great deal of resistance there was some actual violence. And a great deal of verbal violence against them and against the few of us so-called Jap lovers who were trying to help them. Someone said you know we ought to go out on the campus and

pick up though it was yellow bellied pacifists out there who were helping the Japanese. Being a pacifist was not new to flight. Twenty four years earlier during World War One he was a conscientious objector and went to France as a stretcher bearer. Stretcher bearers and those who helped them in the field were often very much more in hazard. And the. General was where. I was shot at once in Warsaw and also in Paris during the. Big Bertha bombing the prayer service knocked down a couple of Davis exploding shells within a few hundred yards. Real job there was reconstruction and relief. We were building houses for Refugees French people who had been caught in the German lines.

The. Experience stays with you just like that which we took it for done. After the fighting are reminders of yours which unfortunately have been repeated. But wars of course continued and during the Second World War when Floyd read of the bombing of Hiroshima he decided to go to Japan to build talken houses and could really raise money by soliciting friends on his Christmas card list. And he worked with both Japanese and American volunteers under the supervision of Japanese academics. It was a token way of saying that we wish to share in the guilt and the suffering. You know way that could be understood. It was concerned that we might be met with hostility instead. The newspapers and the television gave us sympathetic

publicity and people met us with open arms and appreciation. Floyd went to Korea during the Korean War 1952 ended relief work under the auspices of the United Nations. It feels good to be able to help someone. Sometimes it's it feels bad. I've been in situations in Korea where you decided whether China lived or died because you had to decide who you could feed no you couldn't feed. The village where we were working union was bombed by Americans while we were there. Some local outfit got the idea that there were North Korean infiltrators in this village you and I. And killed scores of people and burned most of the village. They were simply blown to

pieces there. The children now grown Ruth was able to accompany Floyd to Korea and they brought back several orphaned children to the United States to be adopted by one of their own children and by several other families. Because twins were born to their daughter who had married Gordon her biase and their children and grandchildren adopted from different cultures. Floyd and Ruth were proud to have a mixture of races among their grand progeny. But Ruth never knew her grandchildren as she died in 1969. We were just about every 50th wedding anniversary when Ruth died. The thing I regret most right now is that Ruth who is a wonderful person and a wonderful mother.

Isn't here. To enjoy these beautiful children. Four children 15 grandchildren and another 15 great grandchildren. Living in their own just difficult. I think people are made to live together. I know they are. And it was only after Ruth died. After living alone fly I decided to renew his friendship with Tonico a student with whom he had worked in Hiroshima twenty two years before. He went to Tokyo and persuaded to Mico to marry him. And in 1070 they were married in Paris. I was 74 I think and she's much younger of course. She's no substitute for rules she's just a very definite

addition. Tomko speech quite good English. But her English and my english doesn't always mean the same thing. We frequently don't understand each other and I don't blame her for being provoked. We haven't come to blows yet. I've always been interested in art. I've never been very good at it. I have it was straight as several of my own books. I get away with that simply because illustrations by the author are tolerated by editors and now I'm doing quite a lot of carving and modeling and I've been doing birds and dolphins and fish more beetles. And I regret that there simply will never be enough. Time.

To do the things that I would like to have done. As Floyd approached his 90th birthday he finally received recognition for all those things he had done. Japan gave him two medals the prestigious order of the sacred treasure and honorary citizen of Hiroshima. Both he and in our region actress Liv Ullmann were honored by Tufts University was a doctor of humane letters and then Floyd was completely surprised with a call from Hiroshima's mayor asking him to come to that city to be the first of two Americans to participate in the Peace ceremony and annual event which marks the dropping of the atom bomb on August 6 1945. Before leaving Seattle Floyd picked up a thousand paper cranes which had become an emblem for peace in Japan.

The story of the cranes involves a young girl dying of leukemia and Hiroshima due to radiation from the atom bomb. She believed if she folded a sow's ingrained symbolic of long life she would live. But as she worked on her 964 Crane she died. Former Peace Corps workers and concerned citizens in Seattle had just initiated a project using the cranes as pleas for peace and Floyd was asked to place them on the statue in Hiroshima which commemorates all the children who died. The. It would be possible to have a peaceful world what's possible

is probable. We could get along the way as nations as we get along this stage. There would be friction but there wouldn't be war. We wouldn't kill each other a word. Of course pulling paper cranes will never stop an atomic war but I tell the children that the folding paper grains will make friends and friends will not make war. Of course it is unbelievable really you know what they have done in rebuilding the city. But still I see it in my mind as it was after the bomb. It's hard to conceive of bombs those made today fifty or a hundred times more destructive than those used in her Shimon Agha sacking. When you heard the stories of what the people had gone through it was almost

unbearable. The ascent of guidance resilin in open space in the center of the city. But it was very near Ground Zero and so everything was flattened and there were things that would burn was burned. It was the nearest water. And so people came in threw themselves and their children into this fish pond lily pond until it is full and was so full of bodies that you couldn't see the water. It must have been a terrible say. It does eat it just must not make us a.

Little girl. So stick with us about. I mean look at the Mail see that yesterday trying to read the place beyond thinking I was wary. I only feel the hurt and the suffering that this reminds us of which we shouldn't forget but which is terrible to remember. That's just my personal feeling it's the meanest. Justin all night he knocked me down and one of the difference may come to the place where the whole world is beyond thinking beyond deliberating even beyond negotiating. And come to the place where they only feel the burden of suffering. This sort of thing would bring upon the world if it should ever happen again. Life is one of the most tenacious things we know.

I am fearful for the short run. The next 25 50 even 100 years perhaps. Floyd was taken by members of city government to the Peace Park where he had built houses. Thirty six years before I was specially happy to meet the people who were so friendly and so warm so expressive of their appreciation. And I'm glad to see that lantern still there and that being in the garden is called a peace garden. It was really a highlight of my life and I've had some great experiences. I guess if you live will live long enough they come to you.

It's amazing to me that Kansas farm boy managed to escape the farm and it's hard to believe that I've crossed Pacific 21 Jamison and it landed almost as often and around the world and I'm looking forward to this trip back to Japan and Korea and oh and China. Flight has been asked to be a guest in Korea as in Hiroshima. In recognition for his work there then he plans to go on to China. Someone said why don't you go over to China when you're 90 years old. I say and. That. The distance from earth

to heaven is the same from any point on the globe just as well be in China. Kirkland. Death doesn't bother me. Dying might be a. Little bit of a nuisance. But Death doesn't. It may be the most exciting thing. Or the greatest adventure. I do think that. Life energy it. Is loaned us as human beings as animals is like electricity. Like any energy can be changed can be used in many forms but it is indestructible. I think that a pledge to all of life from the simplest plants to the highest mammal. I live in Englewood New Jersey. And I felt I could not

miss his 90th birthday. So I am from Hellsing and I came from Florida Bloodsworth there was. An old man going to buy me the true success is measured by the love and affection when the sea was in one's lifetime. And this is what it's going to be seeing right here on. This program was made possible by the subscribers of mine

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