Meet the Mann Gulch 75th Planning Committee – Montana Discovery Foundation

Meet the Planning Committee

Chiara Cipriano

Chiara Cipriano manages the communications and community engagement program for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest as the Public Affairs Officer. Prior to moving to Helena, Montana, in the fall of 2020, she served as a public affairs specialist for the Forest Service in Eugene, Oregon; has worked for environmental non-governmental organizations in Boston, Massachusetts, and Fernie, British Columbia; and completed two AmeriCorps terms in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Everett, Washington. She holds a master’s degree in integrated water resources management and a bachelor’s degree from McGill University in Montreal.

rORY gLUECKERT

Rory Glueckert
is the Forest Recreation Program Manager on the Helena-Lewis and Clark
National Forest, having started his career with the Forest Service in 2015 as
a Recreation Specialist on the Salmon-Challis National Forest in Challis,
Idaho. Prior to his work with the Forest Service, he worked as a seasonal
River Ranger for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Ennis, Montana, then
transitioned to a permanent position as a Recreation Planner for the Bureau
of Land Management in Cody, Wyoming and then Winnemucca, Nevada; he also
assisted in the permit administration and planning of the 2014 Burning Man
event. Rory holds a bachelor’s degree in recreation resource management from
the University of Montana, and enjoys recreating on public lands with his
wife, two young sons, and their goldendoodle.

mATT fERRELL

Matt Ferrell is the Partnership Coordinator for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. Prior to working for the Forest Service, he worked as an Interpretive Ranger at Glacier National Park from 2015-2018, and as the Conservation Education Coordinator for the Montana Discovery Foundation from 2020-2023, working closely with conservation professionals at the Forest Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and local nonprofits to bring outdoor educational experiences to students across Central Montana. Originally from soggy Vancouver, Washington, he holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in environmental education from Western Washington University. Matt fell in love with the Northern Rockies hiking and skiing after college, and currently lives in Helena with his partner Haley enjoying all of the amazing public lands Montana has to offer. He is excited and inspired by all of the fantastic organizations and individuals that have come together to make the Mann Gulch 75^th Anniversary a successful, memorable event for all who attend.

Annie Hanshew

Annie Hanshew is a writer, researcher, and historian, and teaches online for Eastern Oregon University with courses in American History, Environmental History, and Public History. Her work focuses on oral history, gender, and the environment in the American West, as well as the U.S. Forest Service smokejumper program. She is the author of Border to Border: Historic Quilts and Quiltmakers of Montana; coauthor of Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women’s History; and a contributor to The Land Speaks: New Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History. Annie lives in Helena, Montana, and loves to travel, mountain bike, and hike with her husband and their giant Great Pyrenees dogs.

Arian Randall

Arian Randall has been working for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest since 2008 and currently serves as the Deputy Forest Archaeologist, a position that she has held since 2014. Arian holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in cultural resource management from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. She grew up in Helena, Montana, and currently lives in nearby Montana City with her husband and two sons.

Bob Beckley

Bob Beckley retired from the Forest Service in 2019 after a long and successful career – he started as a smokejumper stationed out of Oregon, Idaho, and Montana before moving to the Technology and Development program, where his work was centered around traditional skills such as crosscut saws, axes, horses and mules, and blasting and explosives. Bob’s work also focused on safety and the development of chainsaw and crosscut saw training curricula for employees and volunteers, and his final project before retirement was authoring the Forest Service Ax Manual, One Moving Part, which has been acclaimed as the most comprehensive book on axemanship and used in ax trainings around the world; a copy of the manual can be downloaded from the Library of Congress at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022482194. Since retirement, Bob maintains a connection to his smokejumping past by making trips into Mann Gulch with the National Smokejumper Association trail crew to help maintain the memorial.

Colin Hardy

Colin Hardy is a retired Program Manager for the Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. He has nearly 45 years of experience working in wildland fire research, with over 40 of those years spent as a Forest Service employee, beginning in 1974 as a temporary field technician; he and his wife Kirsten also spent their first married summer in 1976 as fire lookouts near Glacier National Park. He holds a bachelor’s degree in resource conservation from the University of Montana, a master’s degree in forest management from the University of Washington, and a PhD in forestry and fire remote sensing from the University of Montana. Colin also has a unique personal connection to the Mann Gulch fire – his father Charles “Mike” Hardy, also a career fire scientist, served as a member of the victim recovery team at the tragic 1949 fire, and was a consultant to Norman Maclean during his writing of Young Men and Fire, leading to many conversations about the fire in the Hardy household.

David L. Turner

David Turner is a retired Forest Service forester who spent the majority of his career working on the Helena National Forest in Montana and cultivating an extensive knowledge of the Mann Gulch fire. He began studying the event in 1991 as well as guiding trips into the gulch and retelling the tragic story, and over the next 11 years, he shared his vast knowledge of the fire with thousands of visitors to the National Historic Site, as well as through numerous articles that he has authored on the event and even stage and film appearances. In 1999, he was selected as the head of the Forest Service’s Mann Gulch 50^th Anniversary Commemoration planning group and was the recipient of the Forest Service Northern Region’s Interpreter of the Year award. Even in his retirement, David remains dedicated to sharing his knowledge – each summer he leads several tours of firefighters and history buffs into the Gulch and relates the story of early day smokejumping, firefighting, and the tragedy that was the Mann Gulch Fire.

Duane Harp

Duane Harp is the current Vice President of the Montana Discovery Foundation, having retired from the Forest Service in 2011 after over forty years of employment in multiple states. His career began as a seasonal employee on the Plumas National Forest in California in 1968 before graduating from Humboldt State College in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in forest management and then from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 with a master’s degree in wildland resource management. In 1975, he became a permanent employee in timber management on the Tahoe National Forest in California, and subsequently worked as a resource forester for the Plumas National Forest again and then the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests in Colorado before becoming a district ranger for the Chugach National Forest in Alaska and finally retiring as a district ranger for the Helena National Forest in Montana. He was actively engaged in firefighting throughout his entire career, and even for a while after – his last assignment was in 2017 as a Safety Officer on a Northern Rockies Type 2 Incident Management Team. Duane also participated in the Mann Gulch 50^th Anniversary Commemoration events as the Mann Gulch Ranger.

Fred Cooper

Fred Cooper is the Planning Coordinator for the Trails Restoration and Maintenance Program Specialist (TRAMPS) program, which is comprised of over 70 retired smokejumpers and associate volunteers who have performed trail and building maintenance for the Forest Service for the past 25 years. Fred was a smokejumper himself for six seasons in the 1960s before beginning a 20-year career with Forest Service Human Resources as a Personnel Officer on multiple forests and then working in the USDA Secretary’s Office in Washington, D.C. in HR policy for another 10 years. In 2022, he co-authored Smokejumper Experiment with Mike McMillan, documenting the events leading up to the 1939 successful smokejumper experiment and the first two years of smokejumping, when it was still considered experimental by the Forest Service. Fred has also been a board member of the National Smokejumper Association for 20 years.

Kelly McDermott

Kelly McDermott is the statewide membership manager for Wild Montana and has spent 20 years as a field scientist with local, state, and federal agencies, working on everything from karst aquifers to clean air, before switching careers to focus on fundraising and community development. She has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and a master’s degree in aquatic biology and is fascinated extreme environments like ciénegas and their inhabitants. She grew up roaming the hill country and high deserts of west Texas, fell in love with the mountains while living in Colorado, and found her forever home in Montana in 2019, where you will now find her roaming the South Hills of Helena or on her paddle board in the summer, and cross-country skiing, curling, or sewing her way through the winter.

kYLE sTETLER

Kyle Stetler currently works remotely as a Program Analyst for the Washington Office of the Forest Service, after starting as an Assistant NEPA Planner on the Flathead National Forest in 2019. He spent his first summer on a Forest Service fire crew in 2004, and thanks to a serendipitous meeting with Virginia Vincent at Stark Mountain lookout on the Lolo National Forest in Montana, was able to first join the Forest Fire Lookout Association, where he has held several positions such as chapter director, communications director, and SHPO liaison prior to his current role as Western Deputy Director. Kyle holds both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the University of Montana and spend 11 years working for the Government Accountability Office in Seattle, Washington after graduating. He is passionate about fire lookout projects, with his greatest accomplishment being the restoration of the Skookum Butte lookout on the Lolo National Forest in Montana, and also enjoys exploring the Flathead and Glacier National Park areas of Montana with his wife and children.

lAURA mARSH

Laura Marsh is the Community Engagement Specialist at the Montana Historical Society. She holds both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in archaeology from Stanford University and spent much of her professional life as a field archaeologist, researcher, and professor in Peru focusing on the cultures of the Andes. She has since returned to her hometown of Helena, Montana, and has enjoyed getting more experience with Montana archaeology and history through positions with the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the State Historic Preservation Office.

lINCOLN bRAMWELL

Lincoln Bramwell is the Forest Service’s Chief Historian, a position he has held since 2009, serving the agency from the Knowledge Management and Communication staff in the R&D Deputy Area in Washington, DC. Originally from California, he was first introduced to the Forest Service in 1994 when he began working as a seasonal firefighter on the Uinta National Forest in Utah, and over the next decade, worked as a trail crew foreman, wilderness ranger, and Hotshot. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in United States history from the University of Utah, and a PhD in United States history from the University of New Mexico, and served as the research director of the public history program while teaching at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. In addition to his many duties as Chief Historian, Lincoln also teaches courses as an affiliate faculty member of Colorado State University and the University of Colorado, Boulder, and recently returned to wildfire by joining the Southern Area Blue Team Complex Incident Management Team (CIMT) as a liaison officer.

Mariah Leuschen-Lonergan

Mariah Leuschen-Lonergan serves as the Fire Public Affairs Specialist for the Forest Service Northern Region, serving as a liaison between Public and Government Relations and Fire and Aviation Management Directorates. She has extensive experience in both wildland fire and public affairs, having started with the Forest Service working three seasons on the Kootenai National Forest in Montana, one season on the Idaho-Panhandle National Forest, and then starting her permanent career on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest in Idaho through the Fire Apprentice Program, where she worked as part of district, engine, helicopter, and Interagency Hotshot Crews over the course of 7 years. Since 2008, she has worked as a Public Information Officer for the National Incident Management Organization, been in various acting Public Affairs Officer roles for the Hiawatha and Custer-Gallatin National Forests, served in a long-term detail working on the Custer-Gallatin Forest Plan Revision, and most recently, was a Public Affairs Specialist for the Custer-Gallatin National Forest out of Bozeman, Montana. She also has 6 years of experience as a lead Public Information Officer on a Northern Rockies Type II team and holds a bachelor’s degree in public relations from Gonzaga University. When she is not working, she enjoys hiking, camping, trail-running, gardening, and family time with her husband Patrick and their son Niko.

Mike Bina

Mike Bina is currently the Secretary of the National Smokejumper Association and is retired from the Forest Service, a veteran of the US Army, and dedicated 58 years to a career in special education. He first worked for the Forest Service on the Lolo Ranger District of the Lolo National Forest in 1966 before joining the Nine Mile Interagency Hotshot Crew in 1967 and then spending two years as a smokejumper out of Missoula, Montana. He then enlisted in the US Army, graduated from Officer Candidate School with a Military Intelligence Commission, was assigned to the 7^th Special Forces Airborne Group, and qualified as a US Army Airborne Jumpmaster and Underwater Operations Scuba and Closed-Circuit Military Diver. After his time in the Army, he earned a doctoral degree in special education administration and retired in 2018 with 11 years’ experience as a teacher and coach, 8 years as a principal, and 39 years as a superintendent of statewide public and private schools for the blind in Indianapolis, Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore; he continues to teach blind and low vision students parttime. He currently chairs the National Smokejumper Association Mann Gulch Memorial Tribute project that will visit the graves of each the 13 Mann Gulch fatalities on the 75th Anniversary of the tragedy. The graves are located in Montana (6), California (2), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, and New York, and families are being invited to join smokejumpers, Hotshots, and other wildland firefighters to place wreaths on the graves and install bronze medallions on the tombstones. Since 8 of the 13 fatalities were decorated World War II veterans before becoming smokejumpers, local American Legions and VFW post color guards have been invited to pay respects with presentations of colors, rifle volleys, and playing of Taps.

Randall KNowles

Randall Knowles currently serves on the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 4 Citizens Advisory Committee, the Great Falls Safari Club International, and the MT Devil’s Kitchen Working Group, an elk management group. He is a lifetime member of several other sportsman, wildlife, and conservation organizations, and also enjoys leading summer hikes for Wild Montana. Randall is an advocate for public access to public lands, especially for the handicapped, and though he is not a participant, he also advocates for motorized use of public land with the Great Falls Trail Bike Riders Association and Ponderosa Snow Warriors.

Riley Tubbs

Riley Tubbs is a co-owner of Ten Mile Creek Brewery in downtown Helena, and has recently opened the Craig Taphouse in Craig, Montana, with his business partners. He previously worked as a ticket salesman for the Gates of the Mountains, Inc. boat tour company, one of the primary ways to access Mann Gulch, and later became a guide on the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. Riley, his wife, and their two children can usually be found floating the Missouri River in the summer or spending some evenings serving up beer at the taphouse or brewery.

Sara Brown

Sara Brown is the Program Manager of the Fire, Fuel and Smoke Science Program at the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. Her career in fire began in 1996, when she worked for a variety of federal land management agencies in fire suppression and fire management, including as a smokejumper from 2003-2007, and from 2011-2015, she worked as a professor of fire science at New Mexico Highlands University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Willamette University, a master’s degree in environmental science and regional planning from Washington State University, and a PhD in ecology from the University of Wyoming, and is a classically trained ecologist with an emphasis on fire ecology.

Tom Clifford

Tom Clifford is a retired Forest Service employee and US Army veteran. Before joining the Forest Service, he served as an Officer in the Army Corps of Engineers in Germany and then as a combat engineer in Vietnam. When he returned, he began a 40-year career with the Forest Service, working on the Coconino, Apache, and Sitgreaves National Forests in Arizona before transferring to Washington, DC, to work in Land Management Planning, where he was selected for a Legislative Fellowship and working as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman Al Swift. After 5 years in Washington, DC, Tom was selected to serve as Supervisor of the Helena National Forest in Helena, Montana a position that he held for 12 years – during this time, he created the Helena Forest Foundation, now known as the Montana Discovery Foundation, with his Deputy Forest Supervisor Jim Guest. Throughout his Forest Service career, he continued to work on wildfires, and felt privileged to have worked with so many talented individuals. This year, Tom and his wife Gail will celebrate their 57^th anniversary, a celebration that they will share with their 4 children, 2 of whom are Forest Service employees, and their 8 grandchildren.