In early 1981, Secretary of the Interior Jim Watt telephoned me in my office at the other end of the two-square block U.S. Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C. Ron Arnold was headed my way to research his book “about what we’re doing here,” Jim reported. “Tell him everything you know.”

For a couple of hours, I spoke with Ron, a bespectacled man with prematurely white hair, a matching beard, and a ready smile. In the months that followed, I answered lengthy telephone calls as he conducted his research, and I saw him often in meetings with Watt presiding.