No real connection to the following with narrow gauge, but I knew this gentleman for 48 years and wanted to say something about him.
Jim Gertz of Port Angeles, WA died last week. He had been in poor health for years, but still managed to get around as best he could and he still wrote a great letter. I always enjoyed our phone conversations.
I believe that he lived most, if not all, of his life on the Olympic Peninsula of WA and had an intense interest in railroads, especially logging. One of those logging roads was the Clallam County operation of Rayonier, Inc. In it's later years, it had no connection with any other railroad. Jim discovered the railroad while hunting in the mid 50's and he eventually went to work for them. He said that one of his first jobs was as a painter in the shop. They eventually needed a fireman one day and Jim got stuck with that. As fate would have it, he fired 2-6-6-2T #8 in the summer of 1964 on her last trips. Before the line went belly up in the early 70's, Jim was promoted to engineer and worked for about a month or so in that capacity on the Baldwin diesels.
Jim is well known for having purchased and saved Rayonier's Willamette geared locomotive #2, the last of 33 locomotives built by the Willamette Iron & Steel Works of Portland, OR. After a lot of bargaining & fighting, he eventually got her trucked to his property on Airport Road at the north end of Port Angeles and built a shed to cover her. After about 40 yrs, he donated her to the operation at Elbe, WA where crews completely rebuilt her. Jim got to see his prize under steam several times before he left this world.
He enjoyed most things mechanical, especially old aircraft. We enjoyed a few slide shows at his house and he was kind enough to put me up a couple of nights.
We first met in August of 1967. I was on leave from the USAF and had stopped by Portland to see Jack Holst. Never mind that Jack had me up 'till 0330 looking at slides, he woke me up around 0630 and boomed out that we were going into Portland to have breakfast with "a couple of characters". Boy, he had that right, we ended up in at a greasy spoon in an industrial area by the river and I got to meet John Labbe & Jim. Jim slides right over with a big smile and sez "Holst tells me you work on airplanes in the AF". Turns out that he had too, back in the early 50's. That started a friendship.
I found him to be very direct and generous. Like Holst, he loaned me negatives, which I printed in our lab at Edwards AFB. He also later passed along some logging slides over the years.
One on occasion, I was able to get Jim & Harry Wright together at Elbe for an operation of Climax 10. Harry had been her regular engineer while she was at Hillcrest and Jim & I both had enjoyed rides on her with Harry. Both are gone now. I treasure the slide that I have of them both standing together in Morton.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2015 06:36AM by Tom Moungovan.
