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Spread out on a conference table were reminders of James Hull's four decades with the Texas Forest Service.
A hard hat from the Texas Engineering Extension Service marked the 12 years Hull served on the board for the TEEX Fire Advisory Council. A curled maple box from U.S. Forest Service Region 8 represented Hull's leadership and service for the southern region.
From the Texas Forest Service were limestone bookends adorned with a bronze state seal.
The items were among those given to Hull in recent weeks as the veteran forester prepared to close the book on a 42-year career that he stumbled upon by "pure accident."
"I thought, I'll give that a try for a little while until something better comes along," the agency's director said last week. "Forty-two years later, I guess something better has come along -- called retirement. But it has been a great, great career and I'm very fortunate for so many things that I have been able to do and see and experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I obviously didn't."
Hull, 65, announced in January that he planned to retire effective June 1. He spent the past 12 years as director and 15 before that as second in command. The Texas A&M System Board of Regents named Tom Boggus, associate director for forest resource development and sustainable forestry, as an interim replacement.
On Tuesday, Hull's office was nearly bare. Trash bags and boxes -- filled with an equal mix of memories and rubbish -- lined the hallway.
"All the people here, together, we have built programs that are top-notch," Hull said.
After starting out at Baylor University, Hull transferred to the forestry school at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in forestry.
Forest industry jobs weren't exactly plentiful early in his career. Upon graduation, Hull made maps for the United States Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information Center in St. Louis. While he was in Missouri, he learned the Texas Forest Service was hiring. Hull started his career with the state agency in Woodville, north of Beaumont. There, he managed timber on the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation and spent time searching for trees killed by a pine beetle outbreak.
"For a long time, I thought that's about all a forester did was work with Indians and look for dead trees," Hull said, laughing. "But it was a good start."
The forester spent the next nine years moving around the state and up the ladder, getting married to his wife, Eugenia, along the way.
In 1975, Hull moved to College Station to assume a newly created assistant director post with duties that included improving communication between the administration and its field operations in East Texas. He held that post until 1981, when he was promoted to associate director, making him the second in command. He has served as director since 1996.
Changes, challenges
In his four decades with the agency, a lot has changed.
"There is global competition from wood products being shipped to Texas from China, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil," Hull said, explaining that many of the products from developing nations are made with stolen timber. "They can send finished wood products here to Texas cheaper than we can manufacture them at home. That's changed the whole dynamic."
The agency itself also has evolved. The Texas Forest Service now is exploring markets that don't involve chopping down trees, Hull said. Among those is a program that allows polluting industries, power plants and refineries to offset the pollutants they produce by purchasing "carbon credits."
Hull said experts have predicted that the global carbon credits program could be a $30 billion a year industry.
"I want as much of that $30 billion to come to Texas as I possibly can get," he said.
Both that program and the agency's emergency response system -- originally created as a wildfire response plan -- have become nationally recognized.
In addition to responding to natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornados, the Texas Forest Service became the first state agency to head up a federal disaster following the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia over East Texas. Recently, the organization was called to the polygamy custody hearings, where it was charged with tracking all the children seized by the state.
"That was one of the most stressful things our folks had ever done," Hull said.
It's time
Hull said he had long envisioned retiring when everything at the agency was perfectly positioned.
But at some point, Hull said as he flashed a smile, he started to realize that likely would never happen. Instead of trying to leave everything perfectly aligned, all a leader can do is try not to leave too many messes behind.
"When you think about retirement and why you do it, everybody's always told me, 'You can't really explain it, but you'll know when it's time,'" Hull said. "I guess that's the conclusion I came to because I never gave it a whole lot of thought until I was 65 or so."
Interim Director Boggus acknowledged that he has "mighty big cowboy boots" to fill. Boggus described his outgoing boss as a "dreamer of big dreams" who works tirelessly to make them a reality.
Hull said he is leaving the agency knowing it is in good hands, but he is also aware that there still are challenges. Funding will be one of the key issues, he said.
Adding to the problem, Hull said, is an increase in wildfires. There were more wildfires in 2005 and 2006 than in all his previous years with the agency combined, Hull said. The size of wildfires, as well as how the state needs to respond, has changed, he said.
A steadily increasing state population doesn't make the job any easier, he said, explaining that fires now must be extinguished quickly because they often are near residential areas.
"We're not an empire-building agency trying to see how big we can get, but obviously I hope the federal and the state funding will at some point get to a level that equals the enormous demand on our agency," Hull said. "We have great people, but there are just not enough of them."
• Holly Huffman's e-mail address is holly.huffman@theeagle.com.
