By JAMES RONALD SKAINS
Journal Correspondent

Pineville, Louisiana

Gretta Boley, the Kisatchie National Forest Supervisor, brings a load of enthusiasm and resourcefulness to her new position in Louisiana. The Louisiana native, who has worked for the U.S. Forest Service from coast to coast and points in between, vividly recalled an incident in her early career on the West Coast that set the tone for her resourcefulness.

"I was working on the Shasta Trinity National Forest in Northern California as a soils scientist," Gretta pointed out. "I was way out in some rugged back country by myself mapping soil when my truck got high-centered on a pretty good sized boulder. The back wheels were about eight inches off the ground."

"The obvious thing to do was call back to the District Ranger office and have some guys come get me and my truck," Gretta explained. "However, I wasn't about to let everybody on the Forest Service radio network hear a black female stuck out in the toolies calling for help. So, I got out my jack and jacked it up as far as I could. Then I got in the truck and gunned it and moved forward a little ways," Gretta noted. "After I jacked up the truck and gunned it, and then jacked it backed up a few times, I got off the boulder and back to headquarters and no one knew that I had been stuck on a boulder out in the toolies."

"A few months later, a female Forest Service biologist and I were out in the rugged mountain country when a sharp rock cut our front tire just like a knife slitting a watermelon," Gretta recalled. "The biologist was reaching for the radio when I told her that I would handle the situation. I wasn't about to let those Forest Service people hear a distress call from two hapless females. I quickly changed the tire and we were on the way."

"Neither one of those things were any big deal for a country farm girl from Winnsboro, Louisiana," Gretta stated with a laugh. "My Daddy was a cotton farmer. He not only taught me how to drive a truck and tractor but how to work on them. I was Daddy's `Tom-boy.'

One thing that I have never understood about my Daddy was that although he only had a third grade education, he helped me pass algebra in high school," Gretta pointed out. "He was a pillar of the community and a leader in the farming community. Maybe that was where I got my roots in the soils."

Gretta was the "caboose" of the family as she called it; the last of thirteen Boley children born to Fred and Mary Boley. "Yeah, I was lucky thirteen," she acknowledged. "I was the first of my family to graduate from college."

From working in the "toolies" of Shasta Trinity National Forest mapping soil, Gretta Boley transferred to a desk job in downtown San Francisco in 1993 in Region 5.

"I handled appeals and litigation issues in the Forest Service," Gretta noted. "There was a lot of work in that department in the early 1990's. There was still a lot of fallout from the spotted owl controversy and the closing of so many mills on the West Coast."

"In fact at one time I lived in Hayfork, California, which was basically a sawmill town," Gretta pointed out. "When the mill closed due to environmental issues, the people wanted to blame Forest Service employees for the closing. Talk about standing out in a place, I did in Hayfork, California."

However, before transferring to Forest Service regional office San Francisco in 1993, Gretta did a tour of duty at the Shasta Trinity Headquarters in Redding. It was here that another major event in her life occurred. She met her husband to be, Jerome, who ironically was originally from Rayne, Louisiana.

Gretta's fast-track career actually began in 1975 when she graduated from Ward 3 High School near Winnsboro, Louisiana. She was able to get first an academic scholarship and later a work study program in the Department of Agriculture at Southern University in Baton Rouge.

"I've always been blessed with having mentors along the way," Greta noted. "In high school it was my biology teacher who was also the coach. I ran track and played basketball, but academics was where I excelled. At Southern, I met the Assistant Dean of Agriculture, Dr. McKinley Mayes who was a soils scientist," Gretta explained. "Dr. Mayes persuaded me to change from an agri-business major to agronomy. However, Dr. Mayes didn't stay long at Southern before moving on to Washington, D.C. Every time I would see Dr. Mayes, I would kid him about running out on me."

But Gretta didn't stay long at Southern either, graduating in May of 1977 at age nineteen.

"My Daddy had died when I was a junior in high school and when my Mamma sent me to college, she really sent me to school," Gretta stated. "I went to school year round taking all the courses I could, but when I graduated in May, my Mamma told me that I was coming home for the summer."

"By the time I graduated from Southern, I had a job with the old Soil Conservation department and they wanted to send me immediately to Silver City, New Mexico to start my training," Gretta recalled. "However, not knowing any better, I told them that my Mamma had told me that I was going to spend the whole summer in Winnsboro."

"The Conservation Department told me that was fine and that I could start my training in Winnsboro if that was okay with my Mamma," Gretta noted. "I spent the summer training at the Conservation office in Winnsboro and then went to New Mexico in September."

Mary "Mamma" Boley is now 90 years old and still lives by herself in Winnsboro. Gretta has a "book" full of "Mammaisms" such as, "It ain't much of a dog that won't wag his own tail."

However, Gretta's sojourn in New Mexico was not long in duration. "The husband of a secretary in our Conservation office worked for the Forest Service," Gretta remembered, "and he told me about an opening the Forest Service had for a soils scientist on the Coronado National Forest in Arizona."

By April, 1978, less than a year after graduating from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Gretta would be a member of the U.S. Forest Service. While on the Coronado National Forest in Southeast Arizona, Greta obtained her masters degree from the University of Arizona in Tucson.

In August of 1994, Gretta made the biggest move that set her on the course that would eventually bring her "home" to Louisiana as Supervisor of the Kisatchie National Forest.

"In '94, I went to work in Washington at the Forest Service headquarters as an Assistant Leader in the Soils program," Gretta explained. "It was a baptism under fire. Later, I became Budget Coordinator for the Watershed program until I left for the Daniel Boone National Forest in April of 1999."

On the Daniel Boone National Forest in Southeast Kentucky which covers 700,000 acres in the Bluegrass state, Gretta became Deputy Supervisor. The Daniel Boone is like the slightly smaller Kisatchie in that it is the only National Forest in the state.

"Last July, the Supervisor position on the Kisatchie became available," Gretta pointed out. "I applied and in October got the word that I was getting the promotion. I then spent a month in Washington at Forest Service getting oriented to the Kisatchie.

"It was then that I first became aware of the decisive role that Caroline Dorman played in the early stages of the Kisatchie," Gretta said. "Perhaps her role in getting the Kisatchie started has not yet been fully recognized."

"Mentors have been very important to me throughout my career," Gretta, a staunch fan of Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People management training program also acknowledged. "Elizabeth Estelle encouraged me to pursue the Supervisor management positions. I think mentors are very important for career oriented people."

So what can we expect during Gretta Boley's tenure on the Kisatchie was the Journal's question?

"I want to establish good working relationships with all the Forest Service people on the Kisatchie and to build coalitions and good relations with people who use the Kisatchie, either for recreation or for timber supply," Gretta answered in explanation. "And I want to be instrumental in implementing the Forest Plan that has been developed for the Kisatchie."

What does "Mamma" have to say about all this was our final question?

"She's glad to have me back in Louisiana close to home," Gretta admitted. "I think that she is pretty proud of her lucky number thirteen."

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