Interview with Duane Zinkel

AP: Good morning. Today is Monday, June 23, 2008, my name is Allison Page, I'm with the UW Oral History Program and this morning I will be interviewing Duane Zinkel from the U.S. Forest Products Lab. Mr. Zinkel if you want to start maybe by giving us a brief history of where and when you were born and some of that early background information?

DZ: Well let's see I was born in 1934 in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It's about it for the early history. I'm a graduate of the University in chemistry, chemistry course, and I have my PhD from biochemistry from the University.

AP: The university here then?

DZ: Here, yes.

AP: Okay. What years were those?

DZ: 1956 and 1961.

AP: Well, was there anything that was part of your education background that 00:01:00kind of prepared you for work at the Forest Products Lab? Did you have an early interest in wood, wood science?

DZ: No I didn't. Actually, between my undergraduate and graduate years I was looking for a short-term employment while I was taking a couple courses and this was an obvious place to check into. And, actually, I worked for about a year, part-time at the, 1956, 1957.

AP: How did you hear about the Forest Products Lab? Did you have an impression of it?

DZ: I just had a very vague knowledge about it. So it was nothing, nothing very specific.

AP: So when you were looking for employment here, was that something--did you just check into the Lab to see if they had an opening or did you hear about it from somebody?

DZ: No I just checked in to see what they had available at the time. And I worked on a project in the old, old garage buildings on the north side of the Laboratory. There was a steered fermentation to make glycerol by taking bisulphate to complex the intermediate--it's called a steered fermentation--it was an army funded thing so we had huge, well huge for our size, fermentors with yeast and I would do the weekend things. That's what I did, and some of the 00:03:00minor chemical things.

AP: So was that one of your first projects?

DZ: Well that was my first project here.

AP: And what year was that again?

DZ: It was '56-'57.

AP: Do you have any vivid memories or impressions of the Lab when you first started working, maybe the first couple of days or the first year or so?

DZ: Well, as I say I was, I was working part-time and mostly on the weekends so nobody else was really here much of the time although I was occasionally here during the week. But I didn't really travel around the Laboratory very much at that particular time. I have recollections of the people I worked with and such.

AP: Yeah, if you might be interested in sharing some of those that would be great.

DZ: Well, lets see George Hajny was the project leader at the time. People that were at least in it during that time were George Blogget, Hank Grimes, [Ira] Clark was in it for a short time. [pause]. I think that's, that was pretty much it, there were a couple other people too that were sort of on the periphery of it.

AP: What division did you start off in?

DZ: That was in wood chemistry. [pause]. Then after my graduate work of course I was familiar with the Laboratory to a certain degree and I looked into the 00:05:00possibilities I had several other options but I just checked to see what was here and the program in wood extractives sounded very interesting to me and so I took the position.

AP: So was that your primary reason for seeking employment here? Was it just the division or the projects that were available? Or was there something else that was of particular interest about the Lab?

DZ: Are you talking about in '56 or '61?

AP: Well '56.

DZ: Well in '56 I was looking for employment to earn some, some funds while I was just beginning my graduate school work and so that was--no other reasons beyond that.

AP: Could you maybe describe--what was a day like as being both an employee of 00:06:00the Lab and a graduate student with the University?

DZ: Well it was altogether, obviously. As I said I worked on the weekends so we had certain things we had to--well it wasn't we, I had to centrifuge the yeast from the fermentation liquors and, and recharge the system again, and make the sugar solutions that fed the fermentation vats. So it was just sort of labor sort of thing but I knew what I was doing so. And then did chemical analyses 00:07:00occasionally. A graduate student? It's typical graduate student course work and such. That was the reason I was working part-time because I wanted to take a couple of courses first before I got really going into the graduate work. I hadn't picked out a major professor yet and so.

AP: And how long did your graduate student work go until?

DZ: Well I started that same summer in '56 with some course work and let's see. Oh my goodness, it was in '57 at some point that I obtained a fellowship in biochemistry. I really can't remember when exactly that was.

AP: So did you start working more as you finished your school work? Did you work more than just weekends?

DZ: No that was pretty much--I would work an extra day or so during the week and I don't remember--it was a part-time position. It was probably something like half-time, that I remember. I don't remember the details anymore.

AP: Could you maybe describe a typical day of work here?

DZ: As I said it wasn't a typical type job, it was a--I was filling in for people because the fermentation was around the clock sort of thing. And I was 00:09:00taking care of the weekends so the staff didn't have to come in on the weekends. So I did those kind of things. I can't say it was--a typical day meant everything went smoothly.

AP: So was that your primary project, that first one?

DZ: Oh, that was my only project.

AP: Oh okay. So did you do most of your work here at the Lab or did you travel elsewhere?

DZ: While I was working here?

AP: Yeah.

DZ: No the fermentation system was on the Laboratory grounds.

AP: Now we have you--the list that we got from the library said that you worked in naval stores.

DZ: Well that's when I became full staff and that was in '61 after I obtained my 00:10:00PhD and that's the area that I got into. As I said Jack Rowe's the project leader at the time and outlined a very interesting sounding program in wood extractives, which I had absolutely no background in at all. But it sounded very good to me and so I took it and then naval stores became my specialty, the chemistry of pine wood. Not really their extractives but their pine oleoresins and such.

AP: So could you maybe describe some of that type of work?

DZ: Well most of my career I was involved in analytical development analysis and 00:11:00structure determination. Worked closely with the Pulp Chemicals Association, they oversaw our work. They contributed some money but not a, not a lot and at that time it wasn't very common to have a lot of outside money. When I started, the Lab was actually expanding at the time, they were creating new positions and that's when I came on, as a new position. Lets see [pause]. What we did, as I said, we did a lot of work on structural determinations and diterpene resin acid area. Did a lot of work on standardized spectra, and obtained standardized spectra and published an in-house publication that had the actual spectra. Did 00:12:00quite a bit of work on isolation of new unknown resin acids, most of those though were sort of a peripheral sort of thing. We were taking a look at three resin systems in a pine tree that are not interconnecting. There's the cortical oleoresin, needle oleoresin, and the xylum oleoresin and I was curious about the other resin systems that hadn't been looked at. It was pretty common to look of course at the xylum oleoresins because that's where the naval stores were coming from and we did that. But we were curious about the cortical and needles and we found that those were completely different and so we isolated new compounds 00:13:00since they were different and did structural determinations and published on that.

AP: And who did you work with on that? Did you work solely within a department or did you work with other departments as well?

DZ: Well I was in wood chemistry, I mean, almost the entire time and Jack Rowe was my project leader until he retired and we had various other people that were working with me and under me but generally it was just one person.

AP: And did that require any kind of travel with that?

DZ: Well we traveled with the Pulp Chemicals Association, we had meetings here every year and then one to two meetings, I traveled, mostly to the Southeast.

AP: Was there any particular travel event that is particularly memorable or interesting?

DZ: [pause]. Well I can just vaguely remember two of them. One of them was with the Pulp Chemicals Association and it has nothing to do with science, but I went to a meeting in New Orleans and one of the evening meals we went to were Corrine Dunbar's restaurant and that was extremely fine. And the other time was a meeting I attended in Las Vegas, and the hotel that we were meeting at, Caesar's Palace, was full. Of course my name begins with "Z" so they did this 00:15:00alphabetically I was at the end of the list and was out so we picked a motel that was close by, we thought was close by based on the number of the hotel--motel--and it turned out it was a little better than a mile away so I walked back and forth to the meeting, but there was a constant wind off the mountains and ended up with two earaches, one walking from each way. [long pause]

AP: So was there just that one project that you worked on throughout your career or were there many, many projects that you worked on?

DZ: Well if you considered the project was an area of research that was--I worked in one area for the entire time I was here, but project names and things changed but that was mostly paperwork, really.

AP: Was there one aspect of your job that you found particularly satisfying and conversely was there a part of it that was particularly challenging or frustrating?

DZ: Well the structural determination isolation of new compounds and that was always interesting. From the time I came here to the time I left I better than doubled the amount, the number of resin acids that were known and I think the one that stands out the most is--we found a resin acid in the cortical and 00:17:00[needle oleoresins of Eastern White Pine, which was quite different, having a 7-membered C-ring. And it was an interesting, just interesting little project.

AP: I know that you mentioned a couple people that you worked with throughout your career here. Were there other colleagues in particular that you have strong memories of or that you worked with quite closely and got to know very well?

DZ: Well I mean those aren't mutually exclusive kind of things. I did a project 00:18:00with Kuky Kukachka on volatile resin, volatile fatty acids in various hardwoods. And so I got to know Kuky well. Jim Ward was involved and I got to know Jim quite well although we only worked on a couple things together.

AP: I've heard Mr. Kukachka described a little bit before by somebody else and I believe he said that he was quite a character. Was he very interesting to work with?

DZ: Mmhm. I don't really know how to characterize it beyond he was quite a character, you know he was a very nice fellow.

AP: Were there any opportunities to socialize among staff here or was it just 00:19:00primarily through your relationships as divisions?

DZ: Well we had our Christmas--when divisions were a little bigger, they've been sort of compacted now, when they were bigger than that they were more separate. We use to have our Christmas party. And then we had the employees association, which we had our couple picnics and such during the year, and those were always nice events to get to meet people from outside of the area. When I started here in '61 we didn't have the--the only outlaying buildings were a couple of small 00:20:00ones where we did the fermentations in those buildings down there. Then we didn't have the big building 34 at the time, 34 and 33, and so we were located here and I was on the third floor and that's where our facilities were. But it wasn't too long after that they built the new buildings and we very happy to take those over.

AP: I heard there use to be a men's club with the Lab. Were you associated with that?

DZ: Well I was a member of it, yeah. That's what I meant by the employee's group. It wasn't--the men and the women were separate, they both had their own organizations. Think that was the hangover certainly from World War II and such. 00:21:00[long pause]

AP: Well if we want to maybe switch gears I have a couple of questions about the U.S. Forest Service. I was wondering how you felt about working for an agency that was part of the U.S. Forest Service? Did that have any effect on you?

DZ: No I can't say that it particularly did one way or another. It was, I mean that was part of the package and I didn't have any strong feeling one way or the other.

AP: Did your impressions of the Forest Service ever change over time? I know you 00:22:00said you sort of felt a little bit indifferent when you started, did you develop any feelings towards the Forest Service?

DZ: No, I wasn't involved that much in field activities. The closest I got to was obtaining some samples in the Southeast and working with Forest Service people down there. But I can't say that changed particularly.

At one time they had a naval stores laboratory at Olustee, Florida, a research laboratory, and they must have gone out of existence in late '60s, something like that or early '70s, and they closed down. And then, let's see I'm just 00:23:00trying to think it was physically next door--well it was nearby, they had a--there was a Forest Service unit that did a lot of the forestry related things to naval stores because there were other programs in developing techniques to obtain more what they called gum oleoresin where they just wound the tree and collect the oleoresin. I didn't know those people as well, I only got to know about a few more of them later. My area was looking at naval stores that were obtained from the tree by pulping procedures. So, that was our focus although we were involved in the chemistry of any of it.

AP: So was any of the research that you did over your time here, was that applied in some way?

DZ: Well we were supposed to develop the fundamental knowledge for industry to be able to make improvements. Now you can't say if there's a big pulping process that they developed any kind of a methodology and such that could come out, but sometimes there's a matter of them understanding more why they were having losses of material and where they were going, what sort of changes were taking place. So we looked at those aspects of it more than--[long pause]

AP: Did you ever get a chance to work closely with people from the industry or 00:25:00not so much? Was it more internal work here?

DZ: Well I visited various laboratories and, and became quite friendly with a number of the people. Can't say there was as much feedback, we were intending to feed everything we knew because that was our job, but we weren't getting a great deal of feedback from the other direction. I was getting more of it from working with the individual scientists on analytical procedures and better interaction on that level. And that was, I would say that was probably where it went.

AP: So was this lack of communication, was that kind of frustrating?

DZ: Sometimes it was. I recall when I first started, when we were trying to get off the ground because there had not been any research going on here in naval stores for quite some years. You may know that the early years was pretty much under Eloise Gerry who did a lot of field work on improved methods of gum collection and such. So there hadn't been much work here and there wasn't any body of knowledge outside of searching the literature and that's not necessarily always that good as far as getting onto the ground. So I did contact specifically Hercules because they had the biggest program. And they were in 00:27:00wood naval stores, that's collecting the old stumps from the--old virgin stumps from the forest and where the sapwood had rotted away and they would grind those up and have huge extractors and extract it. They had that as part of their industry and they were also purchasing tall oil from the pulping process and processing that. So, they had a vested interest and I contacted them, and we didn't get very good feedback from them, not only cooperation but criticism for having contacted them and all sorts of things. It's very sort of unpleasant, starting it was, but we got past it. [long pause]

AP: Well, I have a couple of questions about FPL in general. What was kind of 00:28:00the relationship between the employees and the administration here? Was that ever--

DZ: In what way?

AP: I mean, how did general employees relate to the administration here within the Lab on a day to day basis? And was that ever a challenge?

DZ: Well FPL has always been a very top, top down organization. [pause]. I was thinking of--well I probably not say much about that, yeah I think we got to pass that by--[pause]. Well I think that it shows up perhaps in I think an under 00:29:00appreciation of retired senior staff and I think this goes throughout the Laboratory. There's always been a great reluctance to use people when they've retired for the knowledge that they've built up over all these years. They seem to--once retirement came about, that was it and there wasn't much done. I've heard this from many people about this.

AP: Well I know that you did a lot of your education here at the University of 00:30:00Wisconsin-Madison here. Could you maybe say a little bit about the relationship between the Forest Products Lab and the University? If you noticed any kind of significant relationship.

DZ: Well at that time I really wasn't aware of anything and since I was--I knew that the old laboratory was down on University Avenue but didn't know much about that. I guess those are you know pretty much standard thing that the Laboratory was first put together with the University and it was on campus and the fact 00:31:00that the first experiments that anyone did were in the area of naval stores in the old power plant, that's where they had facilities. Then I wasn't that familiar with it--I mentioned Eloise Gerry when she was here in '26 and then they would have been on University Avenue at that time. But I've been aware there's certainly been a lot more interaction in the last, what twenty-five years or so than there was perhaps in the very beginning but then as it approached World War II, I don't know what the interactions were with faculty at that particular point.

AP: Have you noticed any kind of general perceptions of the Lab by other 00:32:00employees or the public in general here in Madison? How they feel about the Forest Products Lab?

DZ: I think people have always had a very favorable impression. I mean, it's part of the economic scene of the city but not, it's not nothing like the University or on the scope of it. But people seem to be very favorable for it. They remember little things such as the Kohler work in the Lindberg trial and various little things like that. But outside of that I think people have a 00:33:00pretty positive view.

AP: Well maybe we could switch gears a little bit and talk about your later career here. When did you retire and why did you decide to retire from the Forest Products Lab?

DZ: Well I retired in '92, continued on for another six months after I was theoretically retired, cleaned up a few odds and ends that I wanted to. Well I guess I just thought it was about time that I did that. Can't say anything more 00:34:00I don't know what to say besides that.

AP: Have you maintained any kind of relationship with the Lab since you've left or not really?

DZ: Not particularly with the Laboratory. There've been bunch of people here that I know here that I would certainly in the early years after I retired there were more people here, it's been dwindling since. I've kept up more personal relationships.

AP: Well looking back now, how do you feel about your career here at the Lab?

DZ: Well it was actually very satisfying thing. It was partly the times. I came on '61 and we were in an expanding--the Laboratory was expanding, the staff was expanding, ideas were flying around and things well stayed that way for lets say 00:35:00twenty years. Then after that things--first funds got tight, government funds in general got tight then the Laboratory, the Forest Service, the whole business took place. Probably closer into--probably around 1990 or something about that period of time, there was more effort, emphasis on obtaining ones own funds for operations and I guess that was something I was not familiar with doing. We aren't in a university, we have the university near us but we weren't in that university fight of getting funds, we didn't have to do that and that detracted 00:36:00from the research as it always does. Then later on it got worse and that maybe, that was probably another drive saying, hey my time has been and I've enjoyed it and I really don't have to do this.

AP: What was kind of the reaction from other employees because of the budget crunch? Was there any hurt feelings towards that, or resentment, or did people just take it in stride?

DZ: Well it's a fact it isn't something that one can get hurt about. But those were the times, and the times were a changin'.

AP: Do you feel that your work here at the Lab has made a mark or an impact 00:37:00either on the Forest Service in general or research or the Lab itself?

DZ: Well, I guess I'd like to think that I made a contribution in the chemistry in this area. I have no grandiose ideas about what it, it did as far as great furtherance of great ideas, I don't think it did that. [long pause]

AP: That's most of the rest of my questions. Do you have any other stories, memories, or comments that you would like to record for posterity? Interesting characters that you met along the way?

DZ: Well there've been a lot of great people that I've met here and some I got to know more closely than others and I suppose my memory these days isn't all that good it needs a little prick to get something going. But I can't think of anything that's outstanding beyond what I mentioned. I don't have a whole war chest of old stories all lined up for--

AP: Okay.