How Not to Honor the Dead

Perhaps the most common American trait anymore is our inclination and ability to argue with one another. We are not citizens of a nation as much as members of a debate society. No matter how banal or noble a proposal, no matter how seemingly obvious a fact, contrarian forces can be counted upon to clamber up from the basement and press the opposite case. As an example, there is the dismal tale of Ferdinand Castillo and his hijacked epitaph.

Castillo was a fixture here, the Cal Ripken of Yosemite rangers. For nearly 40 summers he worked--”performed” is a more precise verb--in the tollbooth at Tioga Pass, the high country back door into the park. He was a character, an eccentric--stopping traffic to allow toads to cross the highway, coercing tourists to sing the national anthem as he raised the flag, telling cornball jokes about illegal “ewe turns” and what results when a piano is dropped down a mine shaft (A Flat Miner).

He greeted park regulars by name and foreigners in their native language. He treated each incoming carload to impromptu lectures on the secret lives of bears, the characteristics of native wildflowers, the need for natural preservation. He also could be a crank, scolding drivers of smoky diesels and pedestrians who strayed off footpaths. His act was not for everybody. It could back up traffic for, gee, minutes, prompting the more frantic seekers of relaxation to lean on their horns.

“I would get impatient,” admitted R.A. “Bob” Kaspar, a mountain climber who said he had considered Castillo a “friend.”

More from this friend in a moment.

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Castillo died two years ago at age 76, still a ranger. His friends prayed for him and scattered his ashes across Tioga Pass and decided it somehow wasn’t quite enough. From his kiosk, Castillo could look up at an outcropping on Mount Dana. He had nicknamed it “Lyin’ Head.” His mourners decided the rock should have a new name: Ferdinand Point.

Yosemite officials lent their support for this “maestro,” as one former superintendent put it, this “landmark.” It seemed a sure thing. Here was a Marine veteran of two wars, an orphan who pulled himself up to obtain a university history degree, a ranger who to many Yosemite visitors was the park’s human face. Thousands of people signed petitions. Members of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, which decides these cases, said they rarely encounter such outpourings.

Enter Bob Kaspar, a man who at age 43 has made enough money in mall development to devote his time exclusively to rock-climbing--and fighting Ferdinand Point. He heard about the proposal a year ago and deemed it a “bad idea.” He began a campaign that has cost him several thousand dollars and hundreds of hours. Those long waits in line must have been quite annoying.

By now Kaspar has honed his arguments. He speaks of “philosophical” opposition, frets about “bad precedent.” He raises technical challenges, citing various federal policies. He says Castillo was not a man to match this or any mountain. He was “local color--if that.” He accuses the rangers who support Ferdinand Point of “extreme arrogance,” typical of the breed. His face flushes as he contemplates “the specter of federal employees memorializing themselves on lands that do not belong to them.”

Someday Bob Kaspar will host his own radio talk show, guaranteed.

*

Of course much of his case is hooey. Precedent? Yosemite peaks and lakes and rocks already are festooned with the names of soldiers’ sweethearts and bureaucrats’ daughters, of shepherds and camp cooks and momentary celebrities and, yes, working rangers. Mount Dana, from which Ferdinand Point would extend, was named by young geologists eager to flatter an influential professor back at Yale. He never saw his mountain; they, no doubt, got the grant.

Policy technicalities? Even Kaspar admits they could be easily overcome by an interested U.S. senator or representative. (Hint, Ms. Feinstein. Hint, Ms. Boxer.) Character? The preponderance of evidence overwhelmingly rests in Castillo’s favor. Stature? Well, maybe federal workers deserve nothing more than a paycheck, although it would seem one lesson drawn from the rubble of Oklahoma City was that even government hands can be good people, human, heroic, worthy of more than ritual disdain.

All that aside, Kaspar appears to be winning. A state board has recommended against the proposal. Yosemite, with a new superintendent, has withdrawn its endorsement, reciting Kaspar’s technical points. The national board meets next month, and Kaspar is confident. Ferdinand Point vanquished, he’ll be free to turn his guns on new prey--a suggestion that a road be renamed to honor a snowplow operator killed last year in an avalanche, up near Tioga Pass.

It just shows, Kaspar argues, how these things can get out of hand.