Three Lincoln County men are Forestry Pioneer Award winners
The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation recently chose three Lincoln County men — two posthumously — as Forestry Pioneer Award winners, honoring them at an Oct. 17 event in Missoula.
The three men are Mark Romey of Libby, the late Jack Parrish of Rexford and the late Jim Hurst, Sr., formerly of Eureka.
The award was established as part of the Montana Forestry Centennial in 2009 to recognize “people who have furthered the cause of forestry, forest management or natural resource management in Montana,” according to a news release.
Nominees must be retired or no longer working fulltime, and be former employees of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, federal agencies, the forest industry, forestry consultants, the university system or tribal agencies, the news release states.
Romey got his start in the Forest Service as a smokejumper during and after attending the University of Montana Forestry School. He eventually became a silviculturist, or tree cultivator, for the agency, and is currently a Lincoln County Conservation board member.
“Mark has given his entire life to forest protection, fire management, good sustainable forest management and resource protection as a professional forester and now in retirement,” wrote Joel Nelson in his nomination of Romey. “Mark always has had a can-do attitude in his professional and personal life. Forestry and Fire have been Mark’s life and his contribution has been great.”
Romey said via email “I was really surprised” to win.
In a statement he prepared for the recognition event, Romey wrote that “It’s the people that I worked with throughout my career that made this award happen. From the seasonal firefighter to the Forest Supervisor they made my career a continuous learning forum on both the management of the natural resources and people.”
“For that experience I am truly grateful,” he concluded.
A Department of Natural Resources and Conservation web page notes that Parrish was 66 and a retired forester and mayor of Rexford when he died Jan. 3, 1990. It states that “Jack’s peers nominated him for this award because Jack was a strong advocate and voice of good forest management and all resource protection” and he “was a very key resource for initial attack and fire suppression in north Lincoln County” and “a very strong ‘vocal voice’ in his support for good forest management, good fire protection and his communities and fellow residents.”
According to another Department of Natural Resources and Conservation web page, Hurst “will be remembered as an individual who epitomized the virtues of the Greatest Generation: hard work, honesty, self-discipline, generosity and service to country.” Born in Galata in August 1918 and raised in a two-room log cabin, he “spent a year working on the National Bison Range for the Civilian Conservation Corps” while a high school student in Eureka, manned Forest Service fire lookouts in the summers and later built “a successful career in the lumber industry.”
The name of each Forestry Pioneer Award winner will be engraved on a brick to be placed in the “Circle of Honor” at Forestry Division Headquarters in Missoula, the news release states.