Sunshine Visit

Penn State Mont Alto alumnus Paul "Sunshine" Shogren spoke to the Forestry Club today. In his talk "Past is Prologue", Paul talked about his days at Mont Alto in 1947/48 and his early years working as a forester. In the top picture Paul shows his spiked cork boots he used on logging jobs in the West. The bottom picture shows a closeup of the boots. The box they are in was his laundry box while at college. Each week he would mail home the box with his dirty laundry and his mother would return the clean clothes with a care package. In the middle Paul poses with forestry students.

Among the interesting stories Paul told was how it was common to travel by hitchiking when he was in college. He travelled to Arizona and Oregon for summer jobs using his thumb. After graduation from Penn State in 1951, Paul served as a U.S. Marine in Korea. On one of his final jobs he was assigned to teach officers to pack horses in Quantico to use in operations in Korea. The Marine Corps learned that Paul had worked with burros at the Philmont Boy Scout Reservation in New Mexico.

Paul worked for many years for the U.S. Forest Service and eventually worked on strip mine reclamation in Maryland for the Soil Conservation Service. Retired, he now lives with his wife in Garrett County, MD.