<I>Photo by Rocky Wilson</I><BR>Wallowa Forest Products plant manager Don Bodewig, left, listens to some thoughts from planer lead man Leroy Journot.

Don Bodewig is a confident man of wiry stature who has come to Wallowa County from Garrington, Wash., north of Seattle, to take over as manager over 50 employees at the Wallowa Forest Products sawmill and planer, three miles outside of Wallowa. Bodewig thinks of himself as no different than the “hard workers” who go to their work shift on a daily basis and produce a quality product.

“Some of the finest studs on the market are produced right here,” Bodewig said.

The man who replaced John Redfield as plant manager in May began his milling career in 1984 when he went to work on a cleanup job for Louisiana Pacific in Pilot Rock after high school graduation.

By 1989 he had moved into a management position at LP’s Walla Walla mill and, moving to mills in Post Falls and Chilco in Idaho, worked 11 years for Louisiana Pacific.

He then moved to the south banks of Lake Superior to help build a stud mill in Cwinn, Mich., for Sawyer Lumber Company. He worked for two years there as sawmill superintendent before moving back to the West Coast and spending the next five years working in western Oregon and Washington for Hampton Lumber Mills, the last stop in Garrington.

Bodewig has nothing but praise for the men and women who work at Wallowa Forest Products, saying that they take pride in the milling of white fir, Douglas fir and some lodgepole, and work as a team as well or better than any place he has ever been.

“We want to be here 20 years down the road,” Bodewig said.

He, his wife Sue and their second grade daughter live in Wallowa. “It is so nice to be back in eastern Oregon and in such a nice community,” said the man whose parents still live on a ranch near Pilot Rock.

The man he has replaced, Redfield, has moved to another sawmill owned by the D. R. Johnson Lumber Company in Dillard called the Umpqua Lumber Company.

The D. R. Johnson Lumber Company owns five sawmills, a lamination plant and two co-generation plants in Oregon.

Note: This article has been corrected. See below.