A CCC Enrollee a Day Kept Depression Away

By Deniane Gutke Karchner

(continued)

Benefits of the CCC's

 
      The CCC work helped the country immensely. One outside person stated: "Some of their improvements were really improvements, others served only to provoke a smile until the storms washed them 
Bulding ditches and clearing land were some of the important projects the CCC's did in Southeastern Utah  (SJHC photo)
      away." (Montella 12.) However, storms did not wash away the CCC's reforestation efforts, for of all the public and private forest planting in the history of the nation, more than half was done by the CCC. (The Great Depression: The United States in the Thirties) In one of these forest projects the CCC planted over 200 million trees--in a huge shelter belt from Canada to Abilene, Texas--to break winds and hold water in the soil. The CCC was also responsible for complex systems of dams and lakes which now ensure no matter how severe a drought may come to the Midwest in the future, the skies will never be blacked with dust. (Dictionary of American History 51)

    Beyond the material benefits the country derived from the CCC were the mental, spiritual, and physical help the lost youth of the Depression received. In the National Archives in Washington, yellowing records of the Education Unit of the CCC show that in 1937, 50,000 graduated from grade schools set up in the camps; 400,000 completed college courses. (Horan, p. 107.) In the beginning, rangers and army personnel found the majority of the enrollees, with no previous work experience, were undernourished, bitter, resentful, and hostile. Within a month the plain but wholesome food, the outdoors, the comradeship, the regular hours, the work, and the feeling that they were useful and helping their families, turned them from problems into national assets. The CCC restored enrollees to the high morale which has always characterized American youth.


 
CCC reunions rekindle the comraderie of teenage years.    A get-to-gether in San Juan County: Frank "Bo" Montella , Mike Camberlango, Toddy Wozniak, Willie Certonio. 
(Donna Wozniak photo)
 

    Written in 1987 during Deniane's sophomore year at San Juan High School

Sources cited:

Bronz, Stephen H. The Challenge of America. (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, Inc., 1986)

Dictionary of American History. (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1976, Vol. II)

Horan, James D. The Desperate Years. (New York, 1962)

Hurst, Philip. Oral interview by Kim Stewart, Blanding, Utah, June 30, 1971. Cal State Fullerton Oral History Project

The Great Depression: The United States in the Thirties. Conn: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1968

Keele, Tom "Brush." Interview by Deniane Gutke, June 29, 1987, Blanding, Utah. Blue Mountain Shadows oral history project

Montella, Frank "Bo." Interview by Deniane Gutke, July 8, 1987, Blanding, Utah. Blue Mountain Shadows oral history project

Watkins, Fern. Interview by Deniane Gutke, July 8, 1987, Blanding, Utah. Blue Mountain Shadows oral history project

Wozniak, Thomas (Toddy). Interview by Deniane Gutke, July 7, 1987, Blanding, Utah. Blue Mountain Shadows oral history project
 


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Last Updated July 22, 1997 by Janet Wilcox