Sean C. Morgan
Ken Johnston has retired after 40 years as a mechanic and bulldozer operator for the Oregon Department of Forestry Sweet Home Unit.
His official retirement date was July 1, but he worked through Oct. 19 to finish out the 2013 fire season.
“I liked it, actually,” Johnston said of his career. “I liked 99.9 percent of the people I worked with there. I miss the people. I don’t miss the getting up early and going in.”
Johnston, 63, went to work with the Linn Forest Protective Association on May 1, 1973, he said. “I have always been the mechanic.”
Working there at the time were people like Ron Henthorne, Jim Basting, Rick Wagner, Jerry Whaley, Tim Dodge and Joe Brocard.
He worked in the same compound, located at the intersection of 47th and Main, all 40 years.
Brocard taught him to operate bulldozers, and when Brocard retired in 1993, the ODF didn’t replace him, so Johnston inherited his duties as the bulldozer operator. In later years, he often served as an observer on helicopters, looking for smoke.
Although Johnston started with the LFPA, in 1979 when the Department of Forestry absorbed the firefighting functions, it retroactively counted association employees as state employees. At his retirement, he was the most senior employee with the Sweet Home Unit. With Johnston gone, Carl Lemmer, a seasonal employee, is the most senior member of the Sweet Home Unit, with 25 years of service.
Johnston was born in Lebanon and moved to Sweet Home with his family at age 1. His father was a diesel mechanic with the Santiam Lumber Company. Johnston grew up attending Oak Heights and attended Sweet Home Junior High the year the current building opened.
In high school, he ran track one year, but he got a job at Thriftwise, located where Napa Auto Parts is today. That was one of four grocery stores in Sweet Home at the time, including Thriftway, Safeway and Center Market, at 111 Main, where T&M Pizza was most recently located.
He cut meat at Thriftwise until the store was sold, Johnston said, and then he left for college. He earned an associate’s degree at Oregon Technical Institute in diesel.
In 1969, he went to work for the U.S. Forest Service, serving initially on a brush disposal crew and fighting fire seasonally. He moved on to reforestation and broadcast slash burning, lighting fires in the morning and fighting them all night.
He married Sherry Johnston in September 1972 and was laid off in December. In May, he went to work for the LFPA, protecting private lands in the Sweet Home area.
He didn’t have any plans to stick around for 40 years when he went to work for the Sweet Home Unit, he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking at that point other than it was a paycheck and the first full-time job I had.”
He had opportunities later to go to Salem as a supervisor, said Sherry Johnston.
He declined that move because he wanted to stay in Sweet Home, said Ken Johnston. It would have been a raise, but the cost of living is higher in Salem anyway.
“We wanted the quality of life,” Johnston said, although he did apply for a job in Montana and an ODF position in LaGrande. “We finally just decided to just stay.”
With the ODF, he fought the 2,000-acre Upper Calapooia Fire in 1987. He also fought the 1,000-acre Rocky Top fire in 2006.
Those were the two largest fires in the Sweet Home Unit in the past 40 years, he said. His unit also fought several fires in the 100-acre range.
He recalled felling smoldering snags during the Upper Calapooia fire and has photos of six men, including Cascade Timber Consulting Vice President Milt Moran, standing on a single stump.
Johnston expanded his horizons in 1986 and became a volunteer with the Sweet Home Fire Department. He remains a volunteer with the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District.
“I used to put on an air pack and go into the buildings,” Johnston said. Today he is an engineer.
The Johnstons are also active in the Singing Christmas Tree and Neighborhood Watch. He also is a trustee at Sweet Home United Methodist Church.
The Johnstons have two children, Nathan Johnston, married to Becky, of Montana, and Beth, married to Phil Jackson, of Sweet Home. They have two grandchildren, Tyler, 15, and Cole, 11, in Sweet Home.
Ken Johnston could have retired last year, but he wanted to finish his 40th year, and he wanted to finish building his 40th fire engine.
His first day on the job, he was told to take a pile of steel and build a fire truck, he said. He was given a set of plans, and he built the tank and cabinets on a bare chassis. He continued doing that for the next 40 years for the Sweet Home Unit, other ODF units, the U.S. Forest Service and the Sweet Home Fire Department. Some years, he built two and other years none. In the end, he counts 40 fire trucks.
Retired, he’s still working on vehicles, he said. He has a shop at his house and a list of people lining up for help with their rigs. While tinkering with vehicles is still on his list, he’s looking forward to doing some traveling with his wife.