When Bob Stone was growing up in Canton, Ohio, he already had an idea of what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

Little did the Brownstown man know the pursuit of that career with the U.S. Forest Service would take him to places all over the country — and world — and he would still be doing it a half-century later.

“My family always went camping, fishing and were outdoors,” said Stone, who recently was recognized for 50 years of federal government service.

“It spoke to me,” he said of a career with the Forest Service.

Stone said he recently jokingly told Marion Mason, a public affairs specialist with the Hoosier National Forest supervisor’s office in Bedford, that his career choice also came from watching “Lassie,” a 1960s television series about a smart and fearless collie that performed heroic tasks for her human owners, including the last of which was a forest ranger in the wilderness.

“A little idea gets dropped in your head,” Stone said.

Stone graduated from high school in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War.

“I had to find something to do, so I enlisted in the Navy, and by the grace of God, I wound up in the Seabees,” Stone said.

That led to three tours to Antarctica.

“I have been so blessed with the places I have been, the things I have seen,” he said. “I’ve been so far south, the only way you could look was north. I was at the South Pole.”

The Seabees were sent to Antarctica by the National Science Foundation, a government agency with the mission to advance the process of science. The Seabees’ job was to to construct buildings, roads and other infrastructure for agency on the remote continent.

“When I look back, I was just a kid,” Stone said. “The training they gave me and the experience, that’s where I got my first taste of surveying, and things kind of developed from there. I also saw some guys diving down there and said, ‘I want to do that, too,’ so I volunteered and became a Navy diver.”

While he half expected to end up in Vietnam, he didn’t and doesn’t really know why.

“Just being watched over,” Stone said.

After four years in the Navy, Stone went to Hocking College in his native Ohio and completed an associate degree in forestry.

After a brief stint in private industry, Stone began working for the Forest Service as a seasonal forestry technician on the Wayne National Forest in southeastern Ohio on the Ironton Ranger District.

His first full-time Forest Service position came soon after, and he began his career path in surveying.

“I was in the right place at the right time. They were creating a survey tech position, and I applied and I got it,” Stone said. “That’s when I got on permanently.”

He said the surveying experience he picked up while with the Navy and being a veteran helped him land the position.

By the late 1970s, the Wayne and Hoosier national forests were joined, and in 1979, Stone became a survey technician stationed in Bedford, which was the supervisor’s office for both national forests. He spent several years traveling back and forth between the Wayne and the Hoosier as the need for surveying arose.

In 1983, he moved into the position of civil engineering technician in Brownstown as part of the Brownstown Ranger District of the Hoosier National Forest.

In June 1984, Stone married, and he and his wife had a daughter the next year and moved to Brownstown. The couple wasn’t married for long, and his daughter, Molly, went off to live with her mother in Clinton County.

Molly grew up, married and had three kids and now lives in Ellettsville west of Bloomington.

“My car knows the way to Ellettsville,” Stone said.

In about 1995, Stone said he was moved back to Bedford at the time the Forest Service closed the Brownstown office.

By that point, he had become involved in the community in Brownstown and decided to stay put.

“I was on the fire department for 15 years,” Stone said. “I also became involved with football when Reed May came.”

Throughout his career, Stone focused on road construction and maintenance, providing access to the national forest for recreation and resource management. Overseeing contractors on land surveys was another important part of his duties.

His primary job of late has been locating property boundaries and anything that has to do with those boundaries.

“Any issues on the Hoosier National Forest,” Stone said.

He said property owners often have issues with boundaries not lining up with where they think they should.

“People don’t believe that we are neutral in this,” Stone said. “The surveyor’s job is to put the deed on the ground. Now sometimes in the course of that work, you find problems with deeds. One overlaps another or it’s short or something else. Over the years, I’ve talked with so many landowners who tell me things like, ‘Grandpa said the corner was right here and this was the line,’ and a lot of times, Grandpa was right. But there are times when Grandpa was wrong.”

Stone said he just asks people with disputes to show him the proof.

“If you have any information, please share it with us because your family has been there a long time. You know where those stones are at,” he said. “That’s what we need to find.”

While Grandpa may have known where the stone was originally, he also might have moved it because of a dispute with a neighbor, Stone said.

An interesting part of surveying is coming across some of the unique cornerstones laid by county surveyors back in the 1800s.

“Some of the neatest stones are right here in Jackson County,” Stone said. “The work that was put into marking a stone, some of them are almost like a work of art. Different county surveyors had different ways of marking the stone. Some put more effort into it than others. When we search for a stone that hasn’t been seen in a hundred years and we find it, that’s a great day.”

Stone said surveying is connected to history and genealogy, a couple of his favorite pastimes.

He only spends about one day out of three in the field. The remainder of the time involves paperwork and researching abstracts.

Stone said he has been in the recorder’s office in the courthouses of each of the nine counties that contain Hoosier National Forest land.

He also has been trained in assisting with the removal of hazardous materials associated with illegal dumping on the forest and has participated in fire suppression work in Indiana and traveled to the western United States to assist on wildfires.

“That’s the beauty of the forest service — the diversity of the things you can end up learning and doing,” Stone said.

Stone counts being part of an incident management team following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, as a highlight of his long career.

Two days after 9/11, Stone headed to New York City, where he spent two weeks as a field observer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In this role, he collected information and interpreted building blueprints to assist the task force with searches.

“Myself and another fellow had told our dispatcher if they need help and they call, I’m ready,” Stone said. “And they did call. So two days afterwards, we’re driving to New York.”

He said he never spent much time reflecting about being at Ground Zero just two days after 9/11.

“We had a job to do. You just went and did whatever job you were requested to do,” he said. “What amazed me for the average person to be standing where we where looking out that window, it would have looked like chaos was happening down there, but it was so organized. That’s the beauty of America. When we see these disasters, like Turkey, it’s just looks crazy. People are everywhere. Here, we’re prepared — or least we used to be.”

He said his decision to head to Ground Zero to help was something that was easy, and he didn’t regret it.

“I guess I felt like I did in the Navy. This is helping my country,” he said.

Stone has no immediate plans to retire at this time and looks forward to contributing to the forest service with the knowledge and experience he has gained over his varied 50 years of service.

“I enjoy it, especially the last 10 or 12 years,” he said. “A lot of times, it’s the people you work with. I work with great people.”

He said it’s particularly gratifying when younger people seek his advice.

“That’s a great feeling,” Stone said.

Besides visiting Antarctica three times and 48 of the country’s 50 states (Alaska and North Dakota are the only ones he hasn’t visited), the Navy also sent Stone to the Virgin Islands and the Azores in the north Atlantic Ocean.

Stone said he has been to some fantastic places, and even his trips out west to fight fires took him to some places that a lot of times, the general public never gets to see.

“Because that’s where the fires are,” he said.

Stone’s milestone recently was celebrated with a service award given by Forest Supervisor Mike Chaveas, who stated it is rare to see a federal employee reach 50 years of service.

“Bob’s time includes time spent in the military as well as a long career with the Forest Service,” he said. “While half a century of service is impressive, what is even more commendable is the energy and commitment Bob still brings to the job every day and his passion for the work that he has shared with multiple generations of employees he works with.”