|
Profile: Ray Hunt
This page is dedicated to Ray Hunt, long-time
TEHCC member and Chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference
Board of Managers from 1983 to 1989.
Living
Memory
The Final Miles
Raymond F. Hunt, 1923-2005
Living Memory:
Six Conference Chairs in an Evolving Trail
Landscape
By Judy Jenner
The
Appalachian Trail "is a living, changing thing" that requires a
"vigorous and flexible organization," Raymond F. Hunt, sixth ATC
chair, once wrote. The chemical engineer from Kingsport,
Tennessee, was vigorous and flexible himself and continued
Blackburn's tradition as peacemaker and consensus-builder
throughout the six years he served as chair, beginning in 1983.
He also was the first of three chairs in a row to be elected to
the full three-term limit in that position.
A native of Pennsylvania, Hunt
began a lifelong career at Tennessee Eastman Company soon after
graduating from Yale University. His introduction to the
Trail project began in the early 1950's, with the Tennessee
Eastman Hiking Club in one of its biggest undertakings.
Members rerouted the Trail over the Roan Mountain in a project
Hunt thought "would be the ruination of the club" because it was
so extensive in scope (three years and sixty-five miles).
He began working closely with the Forest Service partners in the
South and wound up coordinating many of his club's relocations.
During his first three decades as
a Trail maintainer, Hunt hiked many sections of the A.T.
He began venturing farther from home with his hikes, often
joined by club colleagues, putting
the pieces together until, in 1988, he wound up at Thornton Gap,
Virginia, where he officially completed his 38-year, 2,100 mile
odyssey. Joining him at the end were his wife, Martha, and
close friends. "You really can't do it [a Trail hike]
without a support system," he observed.
Hunt began volunteering for Board
assignments in the mid-1970's. He was a strong advocate of
ATC's publications program and edited two editions of the
Tennessee-North Carolina guide. In 1977, he created the
first Data Book
and continued revamping and perfecting the annual publication
for five more years.
He said his engineering
background led to a fascination with numbers and making sets of
numbers into graphs he'd use to simplify an issue. In
1983, he quipped that, by the year 2228, the Trail would be four
thousand miles long due to relocations. On another
occasion, pondering the geographic center of the A.T., he
suggested ATC build a portable cairn atop a wagon and move it
each year to the actual midpoint. The variability of the
Trail's center, he said, would persist "as long as maintainers
North and South keep trying to pull it closer to them by
implementing longer relocations."
It was just such humor Hunt often
injected into tense situations. Then, he'd laugh heartily
and so infectiously that others simply had to join him.
He once revealed his "secret"
backpacking: When hiking uphill, he let his companions do the
talking and ask questions. He'd wait until the downhill
treks to answer them. Another time, he proposed a society
for people so attached to their old boots they couldn't discard
them. He wrote an ATN
article about it and hosted a conference workshop to discuss the
matter - to which no one came.
In 1988, knowing of a powerful
congressional chairman's penchant for golf, Hunt tailored his
testimony accordingly. He presented a large map showing
golf courses close to the A.T.
Hunt appeared many times before
Congress, appealing for funding to complete the federal
acquisition of Trail lands. Of the first such occasion, in
1984, he wrote, "We appeared as volunteers and amateurs, rather
than skilled professionals, and that was probably helpful."
As chair, Hunt extensively
organized Board committees and championed ATC's first steps
toward a more comprehensive fund-raising program. He
signed the historic 1984 document in which the Park Service
turned over management responsibility for the Trail to ATC and
its clubs. The hardest part about implementing the
agreement, he wrote in 1985, was "mobilizing the volunteer
effort and resisting being drawn into the complications of
bureaucracy." He characterized it as "the most important
document that I ever hoped to sign." (Years later, he
admitted, "I had overlooked my marriage license.")
Hunt convened the first-ever
weekend meeting of A.T. club presidents in 1985 and called it
"an event waiting to happen." He created a
public-relations committee because he felt ATC had a "good story
to tell." Public knowledge "of our efforts builds a strong
constituency that yields political and financial support," he
wrote in 1987.
In 1989, he addressed the need
for a resource-management policy to protect the Trail's flora
and fauna and other natural features. ATC, he said, needed
to add a land ethic "that goes beyond what is required by laws
and regulations but is a direct descendant of the values that
inspired the Trail project in the first place."
This article was originally posted in the
July-August 2000 edition of the Appalachian Trailway News, which
commemorated the 75th Anniversary of the Appalachian Trail
Conference. Reprinted here with permission.
|
The Final
Miles: How bittersweet they are!
By Judy Jenner
Ray Hunt
talks about the 'self-satisfaction' of
completing his hike of the Appalachian
Trail. Even so, meeting a challenge
that persisted for more than half his
life was a bittersweet experience . .
. .
|
For a few minutes on
April 3, a finishing line was strung across
the Appalachian Trail south of Thornton Gap,
Va. Erected by hiking friends of Ray
Hunt, it symbolized the group's pride in one
man's accomplishment - the completion of a
2,100-mile hike that was 38 years in the
making.
Hunt, presiding officer of
the Appalachian Trail Conference Board of
Managers since 1983, accommodated his
camera-clicking friends by retracing the
final steps several times. After
so many years and so many miles, he didn't
mind over-punctuating the end of the
experience. Like others who have hiked
the entire Appalachian Trail, Hunt found the
final inches a bittersweet experience.
"I could have finished it
last fall, but I decided to wait," Hunt said
a few weeks later, adding, "It was more
sentiment than egotism." He spent much
of last winter contemplating, almost
savoring, the 30 miles of relatively easy
terrain he had left to cover in the
Shenandoah National Park.
The 64-year-old resident
of Kingsport, Tenn., knew his wife, Martha,
would be there at the finish line, as she
had patiently waited at the end of so many
of his A.T. hikes over the years. And,
he could count on the hiking companionship
of his close friend and Board colleague,
Collins Chew. But, he hadn't expected
the entourage of five other men friends who
wanted to participate in his final 30 miles.
Four of them, including Chew, were already
2,000-milers. With Hunt, they were
long-time members of the Tennessee Eastman
Hiking Club and frequent companions on the
Trail.
"I was really touched,"
recalls Hunt, with a flash of emotion
uncharacteristic of his easy-going,
no-nonsense manner. "It's not in me to
be philosophical about it . . . but it made
me feel good that they were there . . . and,
as far as completing the Trail, I feel good
about it . . . for my own pleasure and
self-satisfaction."
At the spring meeting of
the Board of Managers in late April, ATC
Executive Director Dave Startzell presented
Hunt with a plaque commemorating his
achievement: the first chair to hike the
entire A.T. since it became a continuous
footpath in 1937. (Myron Avery,
ATC chair from 1931 to 1952, had hiked all
Trail sections, often as the route's primary
scout, by 1936.) Hunt was obviously
pleased with his placement in Trail history.
In 1946, a few years after
graduating from Yale University, Hunt, a
native of western Pennsylvania, became a
chemical engineer at the Tennessee Eastman
Company in Kingsport. The
26-year-old enjoyed walking and being
outdoors but had never heard of the
Appalachian Trail.
About 1950, Hunt became
involved in the hiking club sponsored by his
employer as part of its recreation program.
At first, he says, he was "only interested
in pleasure hikes," but soon he became
involved in the maintenance of a 126-mile
stretch of A.T., from Damascus, Va., south
to Spivey Gap on the North
Carolina-Tennessee border, assigned to the
club by ATC.
He laughs heartily now as
he recalls a major relocation of the Trail
early in the 1950s. Under the
leadership of Stanley Murray (who served as
chair of ATC himself, from 1961 to 1975),
club members undertook the arduous task of
relocating the A.T. from roads to a 54-mile
scenic route over Roan Mountain.
"I had no idea of where or
why, but I was sure it would be the
ruination of the club," Hunt quips.
The work took more than three years to
complete, he recalls, "but, we did it."
Between 1950 and 1969,
Hunt covered the Tennessee Eastman Hiking
Club's (TEHC) section over and over again.
It wasn't until the mid-1960s that he began
hiking farther from home, mostly on weekend
pleasure trips along the Trail in the Smoky
Mountains.
His first backpacking
experience was at the Philmont Boy Scout
Ranch near Cimarron, N.M., in 1965. In
1969, he participated in an Appalachian
Mountain Club range hike in the White
Mountains.
About that time, Hunt
says, he and the other men he often hiked
with decided to complete hiking all of the
A.T. "We had already hiked several
hundred miles, . . . and it was a challenge
for all of us." Over the years since
then, they have hiked as individuals, in
different teams, and as a full group.
By 1972, Hunt had
completed all of the A.T. from Damascus to
Springer Mountain, Ga. By the
mid-1970s, he recalls, "we decided that the
hardest part of the Trail was in Maine and
New Hampshire and that we better get up
there before we were old men!" So, in
1977, Hunt completed the northernmost 60
miles of the Trail, to the summit of
Katahdin, Maine. During
 the
next five years, he completed the rest of
Maine and most of New Hampshire. He
still had nearly 1,000 miles to go, but the
end was in sight.
For more than 1,100 miles,
Hunt backpacked different sections of the
Trail. The rest was covered with day
hikes that, in recent years, often involved
Collins Chew and the cooperative support
system of their wives - Charlotte Chew and
Martha Hunt.
"You can't really do it
without a support system," Hunt says.
The wives would leave their husbands off in
the morning and pick them up at a designated
stopping point at nightfall. In
between, the women would sightsee or shop up
to 50 miles on both sides of the Trail.
Hunt notes that, among the four of them, "we
often covered a 100-mile swath around the
Trail on each hike."
He teases Chew, who
completed his A.T. hike last year and has
written a book about geological features
along the Trail. "I have a running
joke with Collins that (during our hikes) he
told me a lot more about rocks than I really
wanted to know."
He laughs, recalling the
dual monologues. "Whenever we were
going uphill, Collins would do all the
talking; I'd save my breath and answer his
questions when we started coming down a
hill."
Hunt says hiking the Trail
"takes more persistence and patience than a
lot of people want to devote to it . . . .
Most of the time, you are dog-tired. I
never did get used to it, but I did enjoy
setting out the challenge and being able to
say to myself that I did a particular
segment . . . .
"When you're hiking by
yourself, it's easy to give up," he adds,
noting that he hiked solo for only 142 miles
of the A.T. "When you're with a group,
and the car is waiting 80 miles away, it's a
disgrace not to get there," he laughs.
Some of his most pleasant
memories are of fall hikes in Maine, but he
pensively adds sections in nearly every
other state to the list.
He often reported Trail
conditions to the appropriate maintaining
club. He says, with conviction, that
"I never hiked any section that showed
neglect or lack of concern." Most
problems, such as blowdowns, occur between
maintenance trips, Hunt notes. A
number of Trail sections were in poor
locations, he recalls; in some cases,
because of private property, that couldn't
be helped.
Hunt used A.T. guidebooks
throughout his hike and says he "never got
lost more than 100 yards." Since that
incident, many years ago, due to a poorly
blazed section, he's prided himself and the
guidebooks for keeping him on the footpath
and able to meet a hiking schedule.
"Mostly, I took my time,"
he says. "I didn't want to get into a
situation of staring only at the top of my
boots . . . I was never obsessed with
it at all, although I was pretty determined
to finish. I think that doing it in
pieces provides time to reflect on the
memories of each particular trip. I
remember it better."
He says he's been asked
many times how much money the 38-year hike
cost and laughs, "I don't know, and I don't
want to know.
"It's like going fishing
or hunting . . . or gardening . . . .
You don't want to know what it cost to grow
one tomato or catch one fish."
Hunt notes that
"transportation and lodging costs are
ferocious," and he recounts a 1,000-mile
round-trip he made in 1980 to join a friend
for a 10-mile weekend hike in Pennsylvania.
"It was absolutely nuts," he adds with a
laugh. "But, it was important
too, because that 10 miles was what that
friend needed to complete the Trail, and I
knew what that meant to him."
In 1977, Hunt first got
involved with ATC as a member of the Board's
publications committee. He had already
served as a data contributor for two
editions of the Tennessee-North Carolina
guidebook. He was also field editor
for three editions, between 1971 and 1981.
Hunt coedited, with Florence Nichol, the
first (and only) guidebook style manual, in
1979.
Using the out-of-print
"Mileage Fact Sheet" compiled by Ed Garvey
and Gus Crews as a springboard, Hunt also
created a "data book" to serve as an overall
reference to all A.T. guidebooks. The
compact book contains the mileages to
landmarks and towns along the Trail, along
with directions to sources of water, food,
shelter, post offices, etc.
The A.T. Data Book
that Hunt edited from 1977 to 1983 is now
updated
 each
year by Daniel Chazin of the New York/New
Jersey Trail Conference.
Hunt was first elected to
the Board of Managers in 1979.
Appointed chair of its publications
committee, he served in that capacity until
elected ATC chair in 1983. His
third and final two-year term will expire in
June 1989, at which time he plans to
continue his involvement in ATC affairs as
chair emeritus.
-
In the
mid-1980's, Hunt was stricken with two
life-threatening illnesses, one almost on
top of the other. He seems
uncomfortable talking about the experience,
other than to make light of it.
"Either
illness could have taken me away in a flash
. . . and that would have disappointed me,
not being able to finish the Trail," he
quips.
His carefully
kept A.T. log shows nary a break in hiking.
"It's a poor choice to stop doing what you
want to do," Hunt maintains. "You have
to ignore it (illness) to the greatest
extent possible, so it does not interfere
with normal activity any more than it must."
Always a
"great numbers man," he perks up with a
grin, adding, "I did decide to hurry a
little more" with the hiking, "not out of
fear, but probability."
Now, his
health fully restored and his A.T. hike
completed, Hunt enumerates the many
activities in his daily life. After
his retirement from Tennessee Eastman last
year, he stepped up his involvement in an
extensive historic-restoration project in
his community. He is also president of
the local chapter of the Audubon Society.
"And, it appears I have become a handyman"
for several family members, he adds.
His volunteer
work for ATC requires about 20 hours a week.
At other times, he enjoys working in his
yard, tending to trees, shrubs, stone walls,
and wildflowers.
Lately, he's
taken up writing about different events in
his life, but he shakes his head, almost
despairingly, at the thought. "For me,
writing is very slow and painful . . . I'd
rather backpack than write," he says.
Over the
years, Hunt has been a frequent contributor
to the Appalachian Trailway News,
writing numerous feature articles. One
of his more famous, or infamous, accounts
was to garner tongue-in-cheek support for a
new organization he created - the Society of
Those Whose Favorite Boots Wore Out.
(It was written soon after his favorite pair
of hiking boots wore out after they had
covered 1,000 miles of the A.T.)
". . . They
were like an old friend," he wrote.
"When the soles came loose, I took them to
the shoe repair shop. The shoemaker
said they could not be repaired. I
felt like an old man who had lost his pet
dog. I knew I could get new boots, but
it would never be the same . . ."
Since he was
first elected ATC chair, Hunt has covered a
wide array of subjects in his regular column
in the Appalachian Trailway News.
As with his A.T. hikes and his chairmanship,
his approach is pragmatic, succinct, often
rippled with a dry sense of humor - and
always positive. He has, in short, an
unwavering optimism about the future of the
A.T., ATC, the clubs, maintainers, hikers,
the environment. For every potential
problem, there is a "Huntism" that addresses
the matter with quick finality.
"The A.T. is
one of the best hiking trails in the world.
Certainly, it is the best known, best
marked, and the public has paid a whole lot
for it. I don't have it in me to say,
'Don't use it,' " he says.
|
This article first appeared
in the July/August 1988 edition
of the Appalachian Trailway
News. Reprinted here with
permission. TEHCC member Ray
Hunt was the first chair of the
Appalachian Trail Conference to
hike the entire A.T. since it
became a continuous footpath in
1937. |
|
|
Raymond F. Hunt, 1923-2005:
A Symphony of Service
By Judy Jenner
|
|
The late Raymond F. Hunt undoubtedly is joking about
being “the late Raymond F. Hunt.” That was his
way—to blend truth and humor succinctly, humbly, and
often a bit mischievously.
The former Appalachian Trail
Conference chair from Kingsport, Tennessee, died March 8
after a twenty-year struggle with cancer. Martha,
his wife of fifty-eight years, died less than two months
earlier, also from cancer.
Mr. Hunt was active in Trail and
Conference affairs right up until his final illness,
serving as a chair emeritus on the Board of Managers.
He was just as proud to be an 81-year-old maintainer
with the Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club (TEHC) as he was
when, at a much younger age, he led the club’s
relocation efforts of the Trail on and near the Roan
Highlands. That turned out to be a three-year,
sixty-five mile effort that Mr. Hunt once feared “would
be the ruination of the club.”
It wasn’t, and Mr. Hunt continued to
serve TEHC in a number of positions and, by the
mid-1970s, was volunteering for ATC Board assignments.
He was a strong advocate of ATC’s publications program
and edited two editions of the Tennessee–North Carolina
guide. In 1977, he created the first Data Book.
He was elected to the Board in 1979 and immediately
started working on a publications manual. As head
of the Board’s publications committee, he continued
revamping and perfecting the annual Data Book until
1983, when he was elected to the first of three terms as
Conference chair.
A year later, in 1984, Mr. Hunt signed
the historic document that officially delegated
management responsibility for A.T. lands owned by the
National Park Service to ATC. He called the
agreement “the most important document that I ever hope
to sign.” Years later, when reminded of the quote,
he quipped, “I had overlooked my marriage license.”
Above: Ray Hunt prepares to sign in
January 1984 the first agreement delegating A.T.
management responsibility to ATC, with Interior
Secretary William Clark (behind his right shoulder) and
ATC and Park Service officials looking on. (ATC
photo)
Throughout much of his tenure as
chair, Mr. Hunt joined other volunteers and staff
members in urging Congress to maintain Park Service and
Forest Service appropriations each year to purchase the
remaining tracts of private lands along the A.T.
After his first such experience, he said, “We appeared
as volunteers and amateurs, rather than skilled
professionals, and that was probably helpful.”
Mr. Hunt extensively reorganized Board
committees and championed the organization’s first steps
toward a more comprehensive fund-raising program,
including corporate memberships. Late in his
administration, he addressed the need for a
resource-management policy to protect natural features
along the Trail. ATC needed to add a land ethic
“that goes beyond what is required by laws and
regulations but is a direct descendant of the values
that inspired the Trail project in the first place,” he
said.
Of his many accomplishments as chair,
he cradled each, as if its success were yet to be
determined. He worried out loud that managing A.T.
lands for the Park Service could get bogged down by “the
complications of bureaucracy.” In 1989, as he
completed his third and final term, Mr. Hunt wrote, “We
are not agents of government organizations but
partners…. Generally, we have achieved our desired
results by being nonadversarial and cooperative…[but]
agreement should not be the objective in itself.”
“Greater Trail-management
responsibilities have resulted in more bureaucratic
rules, regulations, and paperwork, mostly originated
outside our organization,” he wrote. “This trend
should be resisted, so that they…do not interfere with
our doing what is good for the A.T.”
He implored ATC members to keep
focused on the target, which he identified as “the
welfare of the Trail” and “avoid being diverted by
alternative objectives,” such as putting ATC, other
causes, or relationships with other organizations ahead
of the Trail. This “mantra” became the “Ray Hunt
Rule”—“The business of the Appalachian Trail Conference
is the Appalachian Trail.” That business must
include protecting the volunteer role in the project, he
often would add.
Mr. Hunt quipped that his parting
comments as chair sounded “as if I were expecting to go
to another world and never be heard from again. I
hope this is not true, because I have other plans.”
Earlier in that same decade, Mr. Hunt
had survived two life-threatening illnesses, one almost
on top of the other.
“Either illness could have taken me
away in a flash…and that would have disappointed me, not
being able to finish [hiking] the Trail,” he said in
1988.
Over the years of his involvement with
the Trail, Mr. Hunt began keeping a log of his section
hikes. As they strayed farther from the southern
region, he believed that, if he persisted, he might well
hike all of the A.T. The fact that it took him
thirty-eight years to become a 2,000-miler made the
experience even more bittersweet as he covered the final
miles in Shenandoah National Park on April 3, 1988.
“I was never obsessed with it at all,
although I was pretty determined to finish,” he
reflected on the experience, adding, “I think that doing
[the Trail] in pieces provides time to reflect on the
memories of each particular trip.”
The section hikes, accomplished mostly
in the company of friends, brought him recognition as
the first Conference chair to hike the entire Trail
since it initially was completed in 1937. Mr. Hunt
recalled last year that what made the event “truly
historic” was that he was joined by Brian King, ATC
director of public affairs, for the last leg of the
trip. (King is not noted for hiking.)
Mr. Hunt said he never got used to
hiking the Trail and called it hard work: “When you’re
hiking by yourself, it’s easy to give up. When
you’re with a group, and the car is waiting 80 miles
away, it’s a disgrace not to get there.”
His frequent hiking companion was V.
Collins Chew, a close friend, member of TEHC, and former
ATC board member, who Mr. Hunt often ribbed for his
discourses on Trail geology.
“Whenever we were going uphill,
Collins would do all the talking; I’d save my breath and
answer his questions when we started coming down a
hill,” Mr. Hunt recalled.
After serving him for a thousand
miles, Mr. Hunt was forced to retire his worn-out hiking
boots, but not without a fitting eulogy. “I felt
like an old man who had lost his pet dog. I knew I
could get new boots, but it would never be the same,” he
said. He launched the “Society of Those Whose
Favorite Boots Wore Out,” a short-lived, tongue-in-cheek
organization of one.
Above: Hunt had no takers for the
first meeting of his Society of Those Whose Favorite
Boots Wore Out. (ATC photo)
Mr. Hunt’s love of the outdoors was
honed as a child. Although raised in Pittsburgh,
he once said he always felt at home in the woods.
He was a boy when he met architect Frank Lloyd Wright,
who designed the Fallingwater masterpiece southeast of
Pittsburgh for Edgar J. Kaufmann, Ray’s uncle.
Many of his childhood memories were of staying at the
house (now operated as a museum) and playing with his
brothers and cousins in the woods amid the river and
falls, all of which are integrated parts of the house.
There were also family ties and visits to remote areas
of Georgian Bay, north of Toronto, that remained
throughout his life.
Soon after graduating with a degree in
chemical engineering from Yale University in 1944, Ray
Hunt began a 40-year career with Eastman companies,
first in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, moving later to what is
now Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport. He
joined the hiking club in the 1950s.
It was at Eastman he met Martha Helen
Morrow, a native of Ware Shoals, South Carolina.
The couple married in 1946 and had two children: a son,
Thomas Edward Hunt, who died at age 16 from cancer, and
a daughter, Judy Ann, who has two children, Mary Beth
Morris and Ben Hunt.
Both Ray and Martha Hunt served their
community in many ways. Both were volunteers for
the Exchange Place, a living-history farm in Kingsport.
Mr. Hunt was also active in Boy Scouts, the Bays
Mountain Park Association, and the local Civitan Club.
Judy Ann Hunt credited her father for
instilling in her “his love of the outdoors and for
family. Both were very important to him. He
was very honest and loyal with his family and with the
causes he thought were important. He always tried
to secure more land to protect areas” for public use,
whether they be along the A.T. or adjacent to a
Tennessee park, she added.
Her father told her often that “he had
no regrets, that he never looked to yesterday, but
instead to what could happen in the future.” She
compared this philosophy to that which he used to hike
the A.T.: “Just keep putting one step in front of the
other.”
Ms. Hunt, who lives in a log cabin on
a 50-acre tract of land near Kingsport, recalled hiking
and backpacking trips with her father and hasn’t
forgotten his insistence that she wear hiking boots “at
a time when no young person wanted to be seen in hiking
boots!”
Of course, she learned to respect his
wisdom on the matter, and, because of his own affection
for his favorite footwear, she made sure her father was
buried with his hiking boots on.
Ray Hunt was known for being
meticulous in his recordkeeping, and his daughter said
she recently enjoyed discovering, among his personal
possessions, a journal in which he listed every book he
had read since sometime in the mid-1950s. “It was
sort of hidden away, as if he didn’t want anyone to find
it and think that he was obsessed,” she laughed.
Mr. Hunt’s penchant for making “to-do”
lists carried over from his involvement as a club
maintainer to Board member and chair to his duties as a
father.
“He always showed up with a list of
projects and jars of nails,” his daughter recalled.
ATC Executive
Director Dave Startzell also recalled Ray’s penchant for
lists. “When he served as chair, it was our
routine to have a telephone meeting once a week.
And, each time we did, Ray would have his list—usually
with 15 or 20 items on it. He would methodically
cross through each action or issue that had been
addressed, but he also would add new items each time,”
he said, citing the “never-ending list.”
On his eightieth birthday, Mr. Hunt
helped to patch some holes in the loft of the Roan High
Knob Shelter. He told his club colleagues, eager
to celebrate his birthday, they could hold off until the
renovation list was completed.
In 1979,
Startzell, then director of education for ATC, wrote
about Mr. Hunt for the Trailway News. He touched
on Mr. Hunt’s unique giggle—“a flute-like laugh”—that
could lighten the heaviest of occasions or debates.
In retrospect, maybe it really was a
flute—befitting the symphony of a life of service, lived
by one remarkable man.
|
|
