ARISTES - In October, when Timothy S. Ladner moved into his new office in Columbia County, just over the Schuylkill County line, he brought a few antiques and relics from his family history.
One was a pick axe his grandfather, the late Roscoe Todd, used in the 1920s while working in bituminous coal mines in Indiana County.
"He worked on the weekends as a coal miner when he was in his teens. He was my mother's father. When we bought our first house in Howard, Pennsylvania, my wife and I, back in 1994, I was lamenting how I had to dig some holes. And he says, 'Well, you're going to need a pick.' And I said 'I don't have a pick.' We were at his farm in Crawford County. There was stuff everywhere. And he reached behind a door and pulled that out and said, 'Well, now you have a pick,' " Ladner, 50, of Pike County, said recently at his office in the Bureau of Forestry office in Aristes.
The other is an iron horseshoe, which was worn by one of Todd's Percheron draft horses.
"That's for good luck," Ladner said.
He's the new district forester for Weiser Forest District, managed by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. His office is at a new $4.1 million facility the state opened in September. It's just over the Schuylkill County border in Aristes.
An assistant district forester for the Delaware State Forest since March 2000, Ladner applied for the district forester position at Weiser when he heard Mark Deibler retired in July.
"I studied the district, read a lot about what was going on. I guess I interviewed well. The stars all lined up," Ladner said Dec. 9.
"Tim comes to our forest district with a wide background of forestry experiences. He worked in private industry as well as a service forester and forest manager in the state Bureau of Forestry for years. He has the capability of doing an outstanding job here at Weiser," Frank P. Snyder, Orwigsburg, a service forester based in Barnesville, said Wednesday.
The forest where Ladner worked previously, Delaware State Forest, totals 83,519 acres in Pike, Monroe, Northampton and Carbon counties.
Weiser State Forest, named for the frontier diplomat, Conrad Weiser, covers more than 28,000. But it weaves through seven counties: Dauphin, Carbon, Columbia, Lebanon, Montour, Northumberland and Schuylkill.
Since he was hired as district forester in October, Ladner has been working to try to learn the territory.
"I know 28,000 acres doesn't sound like a lot. But it's very spread out. I knew there was going to be a learning curve geographically. There's a lot to learn. I've been trying to get out to all our stations to try to meet with our people, including the fire foresters," Ladner said.
He said you can read everything you can get your hands on about a community, but you don't know it until you've had the opportunity to visit, walk around and meet some of the folks who live and work there.
Born in Pittsburgh, Feb. 2, 1963, he grew up in Meadville, Crawford County, and graduated from Meadville High School in 1981.
He served in the Navy from 1985 to 1989 and earned the rank of second class petty officer, E-5.
In 1993, he earned a bachelor's degree in forest science from Penn State, University Park.
"I wanted to be a consulting forester, go out and save the world, protect all the non-industrial forests," Ladner said.
He became a partner in a consulting firm, Professional Forestry Services, State College. Then in 1995, he decided to do more hands-on forestry work.
"I became a logger," he said.
He worked for Melville Forestry Services in Centre County for a year, then he worked at a saw mill, Pine Creek Lumber, in Clinton County.
"I wanted to be a professional forester, so I took the civil service exam in early 1997. I interviewed for jobs at three forest districts. I wanted to be a service forester like Frank," he said, referring to Snyder.
"I enjoyed working with landowners who wanted to do sustainable management on their property," Ladner said.
In September 1997, he started work as a service forester at District 2 at the Buchanan State Forest in McConnellsburg, Fulton County.
"I think a lot of things all came together there for me. For one, I had tested and I'd been in the military. So I had veteran's preference," he said.
In 2000, he became assistant district forester for the Delaware State Forest.
Today, Ladner has a staff of 11.
DCNR is planning to fill an assistant district forester position at Weiser State Forest, since Mike Mazur recently retired, Ladner said.
His family includes his wife, Jeanne, and two daughters, Hannah and Abigail. They reside in Pike County.
He said he drives out to Columbia County to work during the week, then returns home to Pike County on the weekends.
"What I do is I get up on Monday morning and drive out here and I have a place I'm staying in Benton, Columbia County. We'll be looking for a house somewhere out here. I'd like to try to keep the commute under 20 miles," he said.