A Remembrance of the CCC

A story about Frank Wilson by the Commercial Review October 7, 1994

One would make the hole. The second would drop in a sapling. The third would tamp the ground back into shape. Tree after tree after tree.

Nearly 60 years later the saplings are forest.

And the young men who planted them are senior citizens who scan through group photographs in scrapbooks and identify friends lost to the passing of time.

“It’s amazing” said Frank Wilson of Muncie this week. “Those trees are 40 or 50 feet high now. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Those guys who have never been back will be really shocked”.

Wilson 78 will join an estimated 75 veterans of Indiana’s black Civilian Conservation Corps companies Sunday for a reunion at Wyandotte Woods State Recreation Area a state facility near Corydon, which they built with their own hands.

Created as a public works program by President Franklin Roosevelt in the Great depression, the CCC eventually had 56 separate companies in the state of Indiana. They worked on a variety of conservation-related projects; reducing soil erosion, rebuilding drainage systems, and planting trees.

Of those 56, eight were for African-Americans only, in keeping with the segregationist policies of the time.

The largest and longest lasting was Company 517, which worked on projects in Corydon, South Bend and Portland. The group was disbanded in 1941 on the eve of World War II, and the Portland camp near the Jay County Fairgrounds was abandoned. But for about 15 years the veterans of 517 gathered here for a reunion, to trade old stories and share photos of their children and grandchildren.

Much the same is planned of Sunday’s reunion at Wyandotte Woods, where the low-key agenda calls for conversation, games of horseshoes and checkers, and tours of the park that Company 517 built.

For the men of 517 and their counterparts in other units, the CCC was a life-shaping experience, something, which lifted them up, offered them opportunity, taught them skills, and gave them a foundation to build a life upon.

Frank Wilson’s story is typical.

Born and raised in Indianapolis he dropped out of school after the eighth grade. The truant officer, he recalled didn’t even bother to come looking for him. He was just another black kid headed for the streets.

But with the economy in disarray in the early years of the Great Depression, Roosevelt pushed through Congress a number of job creating programs, the most successful of which was the CCC sometimes nicknamed “Roosevelt’s Tree Army”.

For young Frank Wilson, it represented a lifeline, a chance for a better life, and he reached out for it. In fact, he reached for it before he was even eligible. He applied when he was 16, though the age limit was 18. A year later using his older brothers birth date when he filled out the forms, he made it in though he was still a year to young.

“A lot of guys came in at 15 and 16” Wilson said. “It was supposed to be something to help the young man, but it was really helping the house too”

That’s because CCC rules required that most of a CCC members pay be sent home. The pay wasn’t much by today’s standards -- $30 a month – but $25 of that was sent home to neighborhoods desperate for income. “That was a lot of money in those days” Wilson said.

The other $5 stayed with the young CCC member. “Times were so tough that we felt like we were rich after we got in the CCC”. Said Wilson. “And we had fun working”

Wilson joined the CCC in 1934 and was sent along with the rest of Company 517 to Fort Knox, Ky., for training. Thirty days later, the company was moved to a camp near Corydon, where CCC members would work on projects in the Harrison-Crawford State Forest in what is now Wyandotte Woods State Recreation Area.

CCC members graded roads, built stonewalls, planted stands of trees, and constructed a number of buildings, including the shelter house which will be the focus of Sundays reunion.

“That shelter house looks just like it did when we left” Wilson said. “That was really some outfit”

When the Ohio River flooded in 1937. Company 517 joined in relief efforts of low-lying areas and setting up shelters.

For Frank Wilson CCC work began outdoors but soon moved indoors.

When he had filled out some application forms he listed that he had taken a cooking class in the eighth grade. It was good enough to move him into the kitchen.

“I was working in the field for maybe a year” Wilson recalled.

Becoming a cook offered several advantages. Wilson received special training at Fort Benjamin Harrison. “I could take a hind quarter and cut out any kind of steak ” he said. He received a little extra pay that he could hang onto. And designated as a leader, he was allowed to stay in the CCC longer than usual. In fact he was able to stay with Company 517 throughout its life.

From southern Indiana the company was moved to South Bend where it was stationed for 2 years.

Then in 1939, CCC orders sent Company 517 to Portland In. “I often wondered how they determined where we would go Wilson said.

Did the arrival of some 250 young black men in a nearly all-white community pose problems? Wilson believes they were minimal. “There were 250 of us after all. It was an all black unit. And It worried a lot of the towns we went into” he said. “But it was a good bunch of fellows and I think we had the best reception of all in Portland”

Company 515 set up camp near the Jay County Fairgrounds and set to work on a variety of projects. “We did soil erosion work, ditching, and planting trees” Wilson recalled

CCC crews rebuilt Headwalls in drainage ditches. Fencerows were rebuilt, and ditches were cleaned.

At the end of the day Wilson said there was time for a shower and maybe a game of pool in the camps recreation hall before lights out. And there was also time for education. Tindolph Cooke a graduate of Tuskegee Institute was education advisor for Company 517 and helped numerous young men complete their high school education, including Frank Wilson who received the equivalent of his GED while in the CCC.

Other names pop up from Company 517’s past. F.A. Taylor, a first lieutenant in the infantry reserves, was the company commander. F.M.Poole was the project superintendent. And a tough taskmaster by the name of H.M. Brown directed much of the work.

“The guys hated him” Wilson said of Brown, ”but he taught them how to work”.

Off-work hours also provided time for ball games and boxing. Wilson—under the nickname  “Technick” –boxed Golden Gloves while in Company 517, back in the era when segregation forced the use of separate rings for black and white boxers.

By 1941, the mission of the CCC had become less vital to the nation. The Great Depression had begun to ease its grip and war loomed on the horizon. That year, Company 517 was disbanded.

Though there are no records of how many trees were planted or how many miles of ditch work was done in the Portland Area the national figures are staggering.

When the CCC was disbanded, it had built 3,470 fire towers and 97,000 miles of road. Erosion work was done which protected more than 20 million acres. More than 2.3 billion trees were planted. More than 4 million man-days were devoted to fighting fires.

On top of all that, it transformed the lives of the young men, black and white who had been the heart and soul of the CCC.

Frank Wilson, who had been a dropout before “the C’s” considered college briefly before settling in Muncie Indiana where he worked for 25 years for NCR. After his first retirement he joined Marhofer working for several more years until the Muncie operation closed. Then still reflecting the work ethic developed during the CCC years, he took another job working as a courier for American National bank.

And while working as a bank courier, he launched his own business, Wilson’s Flagpoles and Flag Company,

Along the way, he and his wife raised a son and daughter. The son is now a physician and the daughter a special education teacher. Both reside in southern California.

As if that weren’t enough

About the time he turned 70 Wilson felt the call to the ministry. He preached his first sermon just weeks after his 70^th birthday.

His story and the impact of the CCC on his life are typical of the many members of Company 517 Wilson said.

Members of 517 went on to become successful businessmen, civic leaders clergymen and educators.

“I’ve had a real good life and it all stems from the CCC Camp” said Wilson. “That was a good life for young men who were just on the streets when we started. 

The above article taken from the October 7, 1944 Commercial Review with their permission