When Delvin R. Bunton first used a computer, it was an IBM 1620 with a 10-megabyte hard drive, during his study of forestry at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. In modern terms, it had barely enough room to store a couple of photos from an iPhone.

He started using the computer for his homework in other classes. Presented with an assignment that required him to use a complicated mathematical formula multiple times, he realized that it would be much easier to do it on a computer.

So, he created a program to calculate the answers. He typed them up on punch cards, ran them through the computer, printed the results, signed his name and turned it in.

But it turned out that the professor had made a mistake on one of the problems—and then used Bunton’s printout to grade everyone else.

“I didn’t make friends that day,” said Bunton. “But I was done hours before everybody else, and the answers were right.”

That was when Bunton really started to see the usefulness of computers.

“That started me on using the computer to solve problems, and that’s helped me a great deal in my career,” he said.

That career is now 50 years long, and except for three months in another agency, he has spent it entirely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

Bugs

Everyone in the forestry program was supposed to take an entomology class, but Bunton received permission to trade real bugs for computer bugs instead. He enrolled in an additional computer class. He was one of three out of the 400 or so forestry students who were interested in working with computers.

Bunton eventually started working in the Wenatchee National Forest during the fire season. His reputation as someone familiar with computers led to him being hired as the first computer specialist on the forest. According to Bunton, there were only five in the entire region at the time. After some time, he was encouraged to apply for a promotion and moved to the regional office.

Being a forester first, and having related training and experiences, not only helped in Bunton’s career, but it has also given him an appreciation of nature.

“You appreciate nature and the fickleness of it,” he said.

Throughout his career, Bunton would often work as a dispatcher during fire season. He recalls one assignment when he received a phone call at 10 a.m., was on a plane to Billings, Montana, at 2 p.m., and was in the Miles City office at 7 p.m.

“And [I] stayed there for two weeks,” said Bunton.

He says he liked working on wildfires as a dispatcher because it was different from his normal work, but most importantly, it was necessary. “The Forest Service has a can-do attitude. That’s a very powerful strength,” he said.

Utter Fun

One project that united Bunton’s enthusiasm for wildland firefighting with his knowledge of computer programming was when he managed the Forest Service’s fire occurrence data. He says he worked to clean up the data and remove redundancies in the information collected.

At the time, each forest would report if there was fire on it. But that meant that if a single fire burned across two forests, it would be counted twice. The acres burned needed to be separated from the incident count.

Bunton moved the data into an Oracle database, which required him to not only learn how to use Oracle on the job, but also to import the data by writing a program in COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language)—a computer programming language unfamiliar to him.

“You could only do the conversion using COBOL,” he said. “I was a Fortran programmer.”

So Bunton wrote the only two COBOL programs of his career, specifically to migrate the data into the Oracle database, which he was also just learning to use.

Although this may sound like difficult or stressful work, for Bunton it was anything but.

“That was just utter fun,” he said.

Present

In his current position with the Chief Information Office Natural Resource Manager team, he works with Forest Service archeologists to manage and clean legacy data. He enjoys working with others to understand their needs and then offer a solution that can best meet those needs.

“It’s their data, it’s not mine,” he said.

Bunton says one of the things he likes about the Forest Service is the many opportunities across the agency to try new and different things. He points to the varied situations he has been able to work in, from working as a fire dispatcher to working with archeological data.

“I’ve always thought this was a wonderful place to work, and you have opportunities galore,” he said.

Bunton’s hobbies and other interests outside of the Forest Service have a certain commonality with his work. He has been involved with teaching people how to get their amateur (ham) radio licenses and the ham radio community, as well as refereeing football and basketball for local high school and church leagues. All foster a sense of community, and the roles that Bunton has gravitated toward are also—like his wildfire dispatch work—necessary.

“I’ve enjoyed the sociality,” he said. “And it’s fun when you teach classes to see somebody’s eyes light up and say they got it.”

Only 17 people currently work in the Forest Service who have 50 or more years of federal service, including Bunton. And while he is considering retirement, he has a hard time saying exactly when that will happen. He still enjoys his work.

“I want to help people,” he said.

He says that although he has considered leaving the agency a couple of times over the course of his career to go into the tech industry, he never thought about it for very long.

“I concluded that I like the mission of the Forest Service too much, and I like the people whom I work with,” he said. “Federal service is not for everybody, but it has treated me well, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it."