Memo

To: All Employees of Silver County Timber Association
From: Walt Minick
Date: November 27, 2002
Re: Silver County Forest Planning Meeting – Our Jobs at Stake

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Dear Fellow Silver County Timber Workers:

Our jobs are in danger!!

Last night I attended a public meeting with the Silver County Forest Planning Team regarding the long-range planning for Silver County Forest that is underway. A possible effect of enacting the plan is the immediate restriction of all logging activity in the Forest. As you know, the forestland is the main source of Silver County Timber’s raw material, and ending logging activity would put our company out of business and most of us out of work.

Members of the Silver County Timber industry are honest, hardworking timberjacks, who have earned a good living through timbering for over a century. Most of our fathers, grandfathers and even great-grandfathers were loggers like us and ending timber would not only put us out of work, but would end our way of life.

If timbering ends, what are we supposed to do? Go to work with the computer whizzes in Vermillion or the financial gurus and stock brokers at Silver Creek Investments? We are hardworking family men, and these tree-hugging, do-gooder environmentalists don’t take that into consideration. They also don’t think about the fact that Silver County Timber produces the timber that builds their homes, the schools that educate their children, and the paper that makes their books.

As timberjacks, and as employees representing Silver County Timber, please sign the following petition to save timber and to keep our jobs. Once I’ve gotten all of your signatures, I will forward the petition to the Mayor, the City Council, the Forest Ranger, and the Silver County Forest Planning Team. This is the last chance we have to save our jobs!

Thank you,
Walt Minick