Sean C. Morgan
Family, friends and co-workers of the late Denis Zuhlke planted a grove of trees in his memory Thursday morning on land managed by Cascade Timber Consulting.
Zuhlke, who was born and reared in Albany, retired from Linn County Sheriff’s Office in 2011. He later spent about three years on forest patrol for CTC. He died of a heart attack on Aug. 3 at age 65 while on a call to check on a gate near Sheep Creek.
“He loved being outside,” said daughter Melissa Byres of Salem. “They kept trying to promote him, but he kept turning them down.”
“This grove symbolizes life after death, continuing on and people coming together to make sure life continues, and especially to create something that was his home,” Byres said. “Nature was his home. He just loved to be outside.”
“He worked with us as one of the forest patrol deputies,” said CTC President Dave Furtwangler. “We knew him well.”
Furtwangler said when Zuhlke retired he wanted to stay busy.
“We hired him just to keep an eye on things,” Furtwangler said. “He found a lot of things happening on the property that we had no idea was going on.”
CTC deals with a variety of problems on its lands, Furtwangler said, including camping, dumping of trash, illegal growing operations and theft of firewood.
“He also was really good with people,” Furtwangler said. “He knew how to relate with folks even if they were problem cases.”
Even more important than the outdoors was his family, and Zuhlke often took his grandson, Noah Berry of Albany, on CTC patrols, Byres said. “He was a family man, family first.”
Berry planted the first tree, with assistance from Steve Pace of CTC, behind a memorial marker located off the 200 line off Highway 20, about a mile east of Quartzville Road on CTC-managed property. Two boulders mark the location of the Denis Zuhlke Memorial Grove marker, located just off the roadway.
Byers and Zuhlke’s family expressed gratitude to CTC, which provided the saplings and the plaque.
“It’s such a gift,” Byers said. “That generous spirit is not seen a lot in corporate America.”
Furtwangler said the company wanted to preserve some good memories.
“It’s because we really love Denis and wanted to have some way to pay tribute for everything he did for the company,” he said. “It’s just fun to be able to do something like this. It’s something we can remember him by. It’s something the family can remember him by – the good times we had with him.”
Undersheriff Jim Yon said the memorial demonstrates the impact Zuhlke had locally.
“It just shows you the impact he had on people’s lives. It’s just a testament to who he was.”
Yon said Zuhlke went to work at the Sheriff’s Office in the 1970s.
In the 1980s, he left and went to Guam, said retired sergeant Kevin Greene. He was a special investigator with the federal government. He held various jobs afterward.
He returned to LCSO in 1995 and retired in 2011, Yon said.
“If I had a case I wanted worked, he’d be the guy I’d choose,” Greene said. “He was tenacious. He was good on followup.”
“He taught a lot of the young guys, ‘We’re here to investigate and help people,’” Yon said. “He was always thinking of the victims.”
Joining Byres and Berry were daughter Monica Berry and widow Jan Zuhlke, both of Albany. They were joined by CTC employees and representatives from the Sweet Home Police Department, Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Forestry,
They planted some 400 Douglas fir, cedar and giant sequoia. The majority of the trees are Douglas fir.
Bill Marshall of CTC said they would be ready for harvest in 40 to 50 years.
“Forty years,” Pace said. “These are superior trees.”