(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Girls can’t plant trees: Leetch plans to retire after 35 years with the Forest Service – Daily Montanan [1] ['Sage Sutcliffe', 'More From Author', '- Sunday December'] Date: 2023-12-31 Nora Leetch speaks to the foreman of a planting crew. This burned-over area is being planted with ponderosa pine. (Photo by Sue Alley) Nora Leetch had been up since the early hours of the morning. She thrust a planting tool called a hoedad into the soil, placed a sapling in the hole she just made, walked a few feet forward and repeated the process. She struggled to work in a straight line in the morning but figured it out by the afternoon. Tree planting was new to Leetch, but she liked the athleticism of the task, the repetition. A half century ago, they earned two-and-a-half cents with each tree and figured she had planted at least 300. Private tree planting companies in Oregon in 1970 only took women when they were desperate for extra workers. That day, they must have been desperate. When the male supervisor told her she wasn’t welcome back after an eight-hour shift, Leetch stood up for herself. “Girls can’t plant trees,” she was told. The United States Forest Service echoed a similar opinion. “The fieldwork of the Forest Service is strictly a man’s job because of the physical requirements, the arduous nature of the work, and the work environment,” read an employment advertisement printed two decades prior. Leetch, now 71, thinks back to that pivotal moment in the Oregon woodland. “At the end of day one, I was exhausted and filthy and bruised. And I had found my calling. It was love.” More than a half-century later, Leetch is preparing to retire after a long and trail-blazing career as a forestry technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula. She endured blatant and disguised sexism as a woman in a male-dominated field to pursue a career doing what she loved. Leetch is tall but loses a few inches when her shoulders hunch over. She dresses in relaxed clothing, like her late mother’s green oversized sweatshirt and her brother’s ballcap, which fits comfortably over her short greying hair. Her hands shake from a hereditary essential tremor. She smiles often. Leetch spent most of her childhood in Moulton, Massachusetts with her parents and younger sister and brother. She kept active, playing street games and stealing broken hockey sticks to play hockey in figure skates with her girlfriends. At age 18, Leetch moved to the University of Chicago in pursuit of “knowing how things are put together and how the universe works.” A declared physics major, she dropped out after one school year. “I had places to go, people to see, things to do,” Leetch said. “There were a lot more interesting things to do than just be in college.” It was the 1970s, and Leetch spent several years in Chicago setting up food cooperatives, medical clinics in lower-income neighborhoods, protesting the Vietnam War and working odd jobs to stay afloat. She campaigned for equal pay and opportunity for women, the working class and racial minorities. But when the Chicago landscape grew boring, Leetch moved to Eugene, Oregon, where she was “60 miles from the ocean and 60 miles from the mountains.” Leetch sought work creating trails, restoring streams and other outdoors jobs that were typically done by men. Whenever crews were desperate, she was hired as a “token female” and kept up with the men just fine. In 1976, Leetch joined one of the first all-female tree planting crews called Full Moon Rising under Hoedads Reforestation Cooperative. But when carpal tunnel plagued her in the 1980s, Leetch was unsure if she could continue working such active jobs. She turned again to schoolwork and earned an associate’s degree from Flathead Valley Community College, then transferred to the University of Montana in 1989 as a biology major with an emphasis in botany. With one class left to graduate, Leetch flunked an upper-level writing class in the forestry department; her professor came from the private industry and didn’t like that she was working for the U.S. Forest Service. Leetch finally completed her bachelor’s degree in 1999. Before the late 1970s, women were barred from field-going positions or anything beyond administrative duties in the Forest Service, according to James G. Lewis and Rachel D. Kline, who co-authored the article “How Great the Gain!: Women and the Forest Service.” Leetch began working for the Forest Service in 1988 in temporary seasonal positions, incrementally rising from a level GS-04 to a GS-07 permanent seasonal employee in the mid-2000s. She entered the force only a few years after women were permitted to take on the previously male-only positions. In her current position with the Forest Service, Leetch’s specialty is stand improvement. She ensures the fieldwork crew is equipped and trained to gather the number, size and health of tree species in a given area — measurements that allow for statistical analysis and determines what will happen with the forest. She can still complete all her old tasks at a much slower pace, but Leetch doesn’t make it into the field as much as she would like these days. She manages contracts with logging companies, makes sure radios are charged, trucks are fueled up and other tasks to ensure the department is running smoothly. Leetch admits that she enjoys having the option to say, “I don’t know, I’m a seven,” if she feels she is asked to do something beyond her pay scale. And often, she is. Leetch has remained at the GS-07 level for almost two decades but is content with her responsibilities. She feels that she is perfect “technician material.” Leetch seizes small liberties like picking berries during her lunch break and heading back into the mountains as soon as she is off the clock. But during her upward progression through the rigid governmental structure of the Forest Service, Leetch continually proved herself an intelligent and capable technician, regardless of her gender. “All I had to do was supply her with what she needed and get out of her way,” said Al Fix, 69. Fix was a forestry technician and Leetch’s supervisor who retired in 2010. She was irreplaceable, Fix said. Fix voluntarily gave up his summer position in 1994, when Fix and another male supervisor Vic Dupuis had been working with Leetch on stand exams. The regional office was dealing with a tight budget and Leetch’s position was in jeopardy. “(Dupuis) and I relied on (Leetch) so much,” Fix said, so he gave up his position so they wouldn’t risk losing her. Now Leetch has a standing invitation to Fix’s home for any holiday. The U.S. Forest Service reported in 2015 that 27 percent of its foresters identify as women while the nationwide percentage of female foresters lags at 15 percent. Leetch no longer feels like a “token female” among her coworkers and has mostly felt safe and supported as a woman within the Forest Service. Lori Erickson, 64, who retired from the Forest Service in 2016, admires how Leetch was comfortable disagreeing with people and standing up for herself and others. Erickson, who is Asian and a woman, endured many challenges when she began working as a forest technician in 1980 and eventually transitioned to information technology. Erickson recalls a time when Leetch calmly but forcefully held a line and didn’t fold to the bullying of another coworker. “Had I known somebody like (Leetch) back when I was a young woman, I might’ve said, ‘Gosh, I could do that.’ I could push back and tell that person, ‘No, you’re wrong. I did just as much work as the next person…I’ve got value.’” Erickson and Leetch remain close friends. They share a love of trying new restaurants, knitting and watching movies that satisfy Leetch’s taste, which include John Wick-style action movies and anything with choreography. Leetch is fond of dogs (especially corgis), walks and rides the bus as often as possible, and is content with just a flip phone to stay in touch with friends and family. Leetch tutors math in adult education classes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and makes sure to keep herself busy. “She’s like a sponge that never gets saturated,” Erickson said, noting Leetch’s fondness for learning. Erickson believes it will be hard to replace Leetch because of her strong work ethic, her ability to work successfully with different personalities and her extensive experience in the field. “Because she’s so different, she will leave a gap,” Erickson said. “She will leave a hole in the organization.” Leetch is retiring at the end of this year — almost 10 years past the average retirement age for women in the United States — after a 35-year long career with the Forest Service. She doesn’t worry about losing her connection to the outdoors anytime soon — as long as she keeps walking. For any distance and in any environment, “walking is the key,” Leetch said. “Nature surrounds you no matter where you are,” Leetch said. “You just have to be willing to key into it on its own terms in different places.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/12/31/girls-cant-plant-trees-leetch-plans-to-retire-after-35-years-with-the-forest-service/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/