This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) took young people out of the household and gave them a job, money, and training. It put them in a military type of encampment that provided a uniform, some boots, healthcare, food, gave them, as we say, three squares and a bunk. One of the primary things was education and a lot of these guys entered there with maybe no education, no formal education, to an average of 8^th grade. So when they entered in, they were given an opportunity to get an 11^th grade education which was about as far as high school went at the time. They learned skills. They came out of there with the ability to move on in life. After the [Great] Depression, there were a lot of things that came out of that. This organization was sometimes called [Franklin] Roosevelt’s Tree Army because the Depression was on the tail end of the booming timber industry. The timber companies at that time were not concerned about reforestation or anything along that line, and they left behind devastation. So the CCC camps planted millions and millions of trees across the United States. They did a lot of other things here in the McDowell County area and other parts of Western North Carolina. We still see stone bridges that they built. They did a lot of work on the Blue Ridge Parkway. They had dinners at the CCC camps where they invited the local people to come participate. In Camp Jim Staton, on Curtis Creek outside Old Fort, the average enrollee gained two pounds in the first month. They signed up for a six-month enrollment, and in the average six-month enrollment they gained 15 pounds. But we have to remember they were in a Depression. These people might eat one meal a day or they might eat three or four meals a week.