 OWAA Legends
Devoted Conservationist Improved OWAA
First full-time executive director Don G. Cullimore
expands member services, increases membership, and stabilizes the association’s
financial base.
By Lee M. Cullimore and Don B. Cullimore
Writing about your father as a “legend” within OWAA can be difficult. Right
up front, I’ll admit to being biased, but will hope that any personal prejudices
remain in the background.
Dad’s career as a writer and editor began in 1933...with a white lie! He had
applied for a job as a reporter on a small daily newspaper in central Missouri.
As he remembered it: “We were in the Depression. I was broke, Marie (his wife,
our mother) was pregnant, and I needed a job. I’d studied journalism in college,
so I applied for the reporter slot. What I didn’t count on was the need to also
be a photographer. In those days, on a small newspaper you wrote the story, took
the photographs, developed the film, made prints and then etched the plate. I’d
never handled a camera, much less seen the inside of a darkroom!”
Asked by the managing editor if he could use a camera, Dad swallowed hard,
said yes, then quickly found a college chum, who was a working photographer, to
teach him. That crash course in photography and darkroom practice stayed with
Dad for the rest of his life. At his death, at age 82, my brother and I
dismantled a working photo lab in his home.
Another example of how an early experience could forge skills that would last
a lifetime is Dad’s story about moonshiners. This happened in the late 1920s,
during Prohibition. He was working as a quartermaster for an Army Corps of
Engineers crew on the Missouri River. They were cutting willows and weaving mats
for stream-bank control. Dad was responsible for purchasing all the supplies for
the crew, including their food.
“I was called to the chief engineer’s office and told that in three days they
were going to cut willows from an island a couple of miles downstream. It
happened that this particular island was where the local bootleggers had set up
their stills to avoid detection. Somehow or other, I was told, I had to let them
know we were coming. My boss feared that riled moonshiners might shoot at our
men, or vent their anger by vandalizing our equipment.”
The next day Dad took a skiff and motored to a nearby village on the pretext
of buying groceries. While in the store he made it a point to talk about where
they would be cutting willows in a couple of days. “You know,” he said later,
“when we got to that island there wasn’t a sign of a still anywhere, and
mysteriously, we found ourselves blessed with a plentiful supply of free whisky
as long as we were in the area.” Dad had learned the value of good public
relations.
His newspaper career took off in 1935 when Dad went to work as city editor
for the Wichita (Kansas) Eagle. Then in 1942 he was hired as the European
Theater war editor for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It was while working for the
latter that – after the end of the Second World War – he began writing feature
stories about the outdoors for the newspaper and selling outdoor articles to
numerous national publications. Dad was not what many term a “hook and bullet”
writer. He always sought to present the outdoor experience within the larger
social and natural historical context of the subject about which he was writing.
These stories, many of which were sold to the major outdoor magazines and other
publications such as Ford Times and Boy’s Life, were the basis for his joining
OWAA in 1951.
During this same period he also researched and wrote a series of articles for
the Post Dispatch that documented the social and natural history of the Irish
Wilderness, an area of beautiful forest and clear streams in the Ozarks whose
unique story was then unknown among historians and others. His long-time friend
Dan Saults worked alongside Dad in this venture– Saults published articles about
the Irish Wilderness in the Missouri Conservationist and helped secure the
area’s designation as a National Forest Wilderness, saving it from destructive
mining and logging. Dad’s work stands today as the definitive history of the
Irish Wilderness.
At the same time, Dad was also involved in local and regional conservation
issues, using his writing and extensive contacts to promote public awareness and
interest. He ultimately became involved in the fight to save the Current and
Jacks Fork rivers from inundation, challenging the Army Corps of Engineers and
heavily financed local developers in a successful effort to overcome proposed
dams. In today’s parlance, Dad became a highly skilled “net worker” (a term he’d
never have used), developing relationships that – although no one knew it at the
time – would benefit OWAA in the future.
In 1953 Johnson Outboard Motors hired Dad as their first-ever public
relations director, he then faced the challenge of creating an administrative
office where none had existed previously. This was a period of a tremendous
growth of interest in outdoor recreation, and fishing and boating were booming
in popularity. Dad’s responsibilities at Johnson put him in contact with media
on a nation-wide basis, and also led to his involvement with industry and public
policy leaders in this expanding field.
Four years later, Dad left Johnson Outboards and moved to Florida, where it
was hoped the warm climate would help Marie recover from serious heart problems.
(She was unable to continue living in northern Illinois where Johnson Outboard’s
headquarters was located.) He worked there as public relations director for
Gator Trailers. After Marie’s death in 1958, Dad left the corporate world and
went on the road as a full-time free-lance writer and editor, roaming the
country in a pickup camper with his flop-eared beagle, Toby.
His involvement in OWAA had continued throughout the ‘50s and early ‘60's. He
was active on committees and was eventually elected a member of the Board of
Directors. At times, he was also a member of AGLOW and the FOWA. During his
travels around the country, both as a representative of outdoor industry and
later as a free-lancer, he made it a practice to visit fellow OWAA members
whenever he had a chance. My observation is that he had a knack for getting to
know people, and for helping them to know him. Many times I was with him when he
met someone new, and within a few minutes the two of them would discover they
had a mutual acquaintance somewhere in the world. It was uncanny how often this
happened, but it was indicative of Dad’s far-reaching contacts.
Without going into the specifics of the background leading up to events that
occurred at OWAA’s annual membership meeting in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1963 (read
Fifty Years of O.W.A.A. – A Historical Summary...), suffice it to say that the
association had problems and needed someone who could sort them out. Prior to
the meeting it had been decided that a full-time executive director should be
hired, but was that possible?
Perhaps Grits Gresham stated the situation best in the May 1972, issue of
Outdoors Unlimited. Recalling the events of the Erie meeting, Grits, who was
association president then, wrote: “We thrashed the bushes seeking executive
director prospects, and each time the shaking ended there stood Don Cullimore.
So we called him in at the Erie convention and made him the worst proposition
you ever heard – “Don, here’s the scoop. OWAA has no money, quite a few debts,
and a lot of problems, and we’d like for you to come in and take care of these
things. We can’t pay you enough to live on, but if you do a good job maybe
someday we can.”
“Anybody in his right mind would have laughed at such a deal as he walked out
of the room, so Don took it!
Dad’s 30-plus years experience as a writer and editor, public relations
practitioner and administrator were tools that he brought to OWAA when he
accepted the job. But more than that, he was enthusiastic about solving the
challenges facing the association, and he knew he’d have the help of the
membership in doing so. Pappy, as he was called by many in OWAA, was happy!
For the next nine years Dad served OWAA as its first full-time executive
director. By all accounts, he was successful in guiding the association to a
position of expanded membership, with an increased and stable financial base.
Along the way the members gained increased and improved services, and under his
direction the organization established long-term objectives and programs that
are used today to serve the diversified needs of its membership. But of more
importance to Dad was that OWAA and its members were recognized by industry and
media leaders as legitimate, professional communicators. At the time of his
retirement, Dad was extremely gratified that OWAA had progressed to the point
where a man with Ed Hanson’s credentials would consider becoming the next
executive director. He greatly admired Ed and in the years that followed, Dad
was always telling me how proud he was of Ed’s accomplishments.
If he were here to read this, Dad would tell you that he hadn’t worked alone
in his efforts to improve OWAA. He had tremendous faith in, and appreciation
for, the members themselves and the work they did on committees, through their
service on the Board of Directors, and individually within their communities and
their contacts with industry and the media. His time as executive director
provided him with the big picture that all of his prior experiences had enabled
him to see as the future of OWAA.
During his term as executive director, Dad gave up his writing. I once asked
him why he didn’t keep his hand in, because I knew that writing was his real
interest in life. “Because,” he said, “It would appear to the membership that I
was competing with them.” After retiring from OWAA, he returned to free-lance
writing and public relations in the outdoor field.
At the time of his retirement in 1972, Dad was presented the Ham Brown Award
“for devoted past service to the organization over a period of continuous
years.” But his service to OWAA didn’t end then. He stayed involved as a source
of information and background whenever the organization felt his thoughts were
wanted. Then, in 1976, he was asked to write the first published history of
OWAA. My brother, Don, writing in the February 1990, issue of Outdoors
Unlimited, recalled that episode in Dad’s life. “I remember visiting Dad on
several occasions...and finding him furiously pounding away on his old
Underwood...with OWAA documents, newspaper clippings, letters and assorted other
research papers piled deep about him like a paper blanket...He was honored that
the Board of Directors...had asked him to undertake (the project)."
Dad’s work resulted in the 1977 publication of Fifty Years of O.W.A.A. – A
Historical Summary of the Outdoor Writer’s Association of America. He had
been actively involved with the association for twenty-six of those years and
continued as a member until he died.
On a cold, gray winter morning after Dad’s death, Christmas Day, 1989, my
brother and I scattered his ashes into the swift water of the Current River. As
they drifted away we each remembered a man who was already a legend to us.
Today, 25 years after his last official act for OWAA, we’re honored that the
association has extended this recognition to our father.
Lee “Duke” Cullimore and Don “Rocky” Cullimore are former members of OWAA.
Lee retired as executive director of the Water Ski Association of America in
1994, and is currently working on book and free-lance magazine projects. He and
his wife, Marcia, live on an 85-acre patch of the Ozarks in Versailles, MO,
where they do some tree farming. Don is director of public relations and
publications for Central Methodist College in Fayette, MO.
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