<Begin Segment 3>

KL: Alisa, do you have other questions along this line of conversation?

AL: Were you there when they dedicated the Blue Star Highway plaque?

ER: I think I was, but I don't remember anything about it, to be honest. Ross Hopkins worked pretty close with that. I really don't have any... you know, I've got to tell you one little story that just came to mind. There are some donations in your collection there of some trunks and all that came from Lonnie Hammargren. Lonnie Hammargren was the former lieutenant governor of Nevada. And that's a whole another story about him. But the intriguing thing about him, he's a big collector. And every year he has an open house on Nevada Day. He's got about two houses joined together, and it's like the Smithsonian there. And he invited Marge and I to go on a tour. Well, he used to come to our bookstore, and he was one of these people who would walk real fast down the aisle, "I want that book, I want that book," by the spine. And we got to be somewhat friends there, he was a character. And in fact, he said -- he became lieutenant governor -- and he said, "Ed, I'd like to put you on one of the committees up here. Oh, you're a Democrat? That won't work." We're Republicans now. [Laughs] But he invited Marge and I to come over to his house. And he took his tremendous, big house, there were a couple trunks. He said, "These came, these trunks and these beds and some things came from one of the Japanese American internment camps in California." And I said, "Which one?" He said, "Well, I'm not sure." I said, "Was it Manzanar?" "Yeah, I think it was Manzanar." And I said, "Would you mind donating those?" and he did. So they're all in the collection. And it was kind of funny that they had a big celebration on the Holocaust anniversary, and he had about a hundred Jewish people, some had been interned, and they were there at his house. And since the internment camp kind of related, he invited Marge and I to come with the group, too. And he said, "We'll use that as a night to officially donate all these items." So he had the media there with the cameras and all, and he said, "Let's you and I get up there, and I'll give these to the Park Service and recognize the Park Service and my contribution to donate to the Park Service." So I stood up there by the camera, and that's when he was actually running for lieutenant governor. And all of a sudden he came out running for office. I don't know that he said anything, he said, "Oh, by the way, I'm donating all this stuff to the Manzanar National Historic Site." But he's a character.

KL: How did he acquire the things, the trunks and stuff?

ER: He is an ultimate collector. I mean, if you ever get down here in Nevada Days, find out when he's having an open house. He'll have people lined up several blocks long to go in his collection. It is phenomenal. He's got a mockup of Mount Rushmore, he was a surgeon for the space, NASA, for a while. He's a brain surgeon, and he's a flaky guy, but a neat guy, he's so much fun. When I retired Death Valley in 1994, the party was in the visitor center. And Ross Hopkins, I think, arranged this. But all of a sudden, here came this guy dressed in buckskins and all that, and Al Hendricks, who was superintendent of Great Basin at the time, said, "Ed, who in the hell is that guy coming in?" Well, that's your lieutenant governor. But he prided himself on being Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, he looked like Teddy Roosevelt, and he liked to dress the part. So he came down to my retirement party.

KL: What better occasion, a National Park Service retirement party?

ER: Right. And he seemed to really enjoy it. I said, "Who in the devil is he going to sit with?" And John Stark, I don't know if you ever ran into John Stark, but he was kind of a computer geek, nerd, but brilliant mind when it comes to GIS and all that. Those two sat together, and they had a ball. Because we saw, everyone was at breakfast the next morning, and they really enjoyed sitting next to John Stark. I said, well, they got the two right minds together. Excuse me for aside there, but I wanted to put a tie-in to the donations.

AL: I just had a question actually about donations, and maybe this is better later. But I know Ross Hopkins had, in the museum collection he had a number of rifles similar to those used at Manzanar. I was curious if you knew anything about that and why he was acquiring rifles? They've since been de-accessioned.

ER: I really don't know. First I've heard about the rifles there.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.