Each person is a living history book. Oral history is a way of collecting and preserving personal memories and experiences. Historians have a need not simply to understand the great events and powerful figures in a decade or a century, but to understand the ordinary, day-to-day lives of us all. In fact, for most of humanity's time on planet earth, oral transmission has been the only way that history and all knowledge and experience passed from one person to another, one generation to the next.

Bernie Agrons, who became the last V.P. and General Manager of Rockport Redwood Company in 1966, originally moved to Rockport in 1956 from Pacific Lumber Company in Scotia, California, and remained until approximately 1969. After leaving Rockport, Bernie eventually took a position with Weyerhauser, becoming in a few years the timberlands manager of a 650,000 acre forest in North Carolina. Later he was transferred to Klamath Falls, Oregon and became Vice President of Weyerhauser's Eastern Oregon Region, overseeing a 630,000 acre tract of pine forest. Now retired from both Weyerhauser and the Oregon legislature, Bernie returned to Rockport in 2007 to re-visit his old home, converted to an MRC guest house, and reminisce about life at Rockport in the final years of company operations. With him was his daughter, Judy Bergstrom, who came to Rockport as an adopted 1-month-old infant in January 1958 and moved away with her family when she was about 11 years old.

Most of the video clips provided here are about life at Rockport in the 1950s and 60s. In two of the clips, Whittler's Bench and Cottoneva Stream, Bernie is walking through the Honky Tonk Picnic Area at Rockport, a former demonstration forest that he himself started, and commenting on things along the trail. Simply click on a video title to view the clip. For those who may not have high speed DSL or cable connections, the files sizes are indicated.

Rockport Video Library

Primary Sources

Agrons, Bernie and Judy Bergstrom. Video interviews at Rockport Beach and Rockport Guest House, 6 May 2007, conducted by Doris M. Schoenhoff (MRC).