MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Time now for StoryCorps. Donald Hart and Blaine Kortemeyer worked together for years as park rangers at Mount Rushmore. Twenty years ago this month, they were part of a team that had been specially trained to brave the heights and wash the four faces of the presidents, something no one had ever attempted. They came to StoryCorps to remember.
DON HART: What was it, 70 years or so of just dirt?
BLAINE KORTEMEYER: Yeah.
HART: I think we used about 800 feet of fire hose to get the water up there.
KORTEMEYER: And a couple of times the hose broke. Critters would...
HART: Chipmunks, they're terrible.
KORTEMEYER: Chipmunks would gnaw on the fire hose.
HART: We went through a lot of fire hose.
KORTEMEYER: (Laughter).
HART: None of us had any rope experience, and all of us went over the faces the first time.
KORTEMEYER: Scary.
HART: Very scary. In fact, I was the first one over the edge out of the group, and I was eye-to-eye with Lincoln.
KORTEMEYER: When you go over Lincoln, once you are down below about midway in the hairline, you're hanging free. Your feet aren't touching the granite of the face until you're swinging.
HART: And you don't want to do any damage up there. You need to use the same strategy as if you're playing chess. You need to think ahead two or three moves.
KORTEMEYER: To make sure that it all stays somewhat safe.
HART: There was still handwritten directions on the underside of the eyebrows of some of the presidents.
KORTEMEYER: That's grease pencil up in the eyes.
HART: Yep, directing the workers how to do the finished carving on the eyes.
KORTEMEYER: There's also a quarter we found on top of Lincoln one day. We didn't know when the quarter showed up and nobody gets to go over the face other than us, so we decided to put it in Jefferson's left eye, and I'm sure it's still there today. I enjoyed Jefferson the most and I - this sounds weird, but I gave him a kiss on his lip (laughter).
HART: I was assigned to Lincoln. We have become very well acquainted over the years. It's definitely a special bond.
KORTEMEYER: So today, yeah, as people move and some like myself, advance in age, it gets harder to do this job.
HART: Out of the original seven, we have three left. We have all aged a little bit, and this is a very demanding job.
KORTEMEYER: The time that I've been here, I've been blessed to help clean an icon of our country.
HART: It's not something that could be taken lightly.
(SOUNDBITE OF GREGOR HUBER ET AL.'S "IN TIME")
MARTIN: Donald Hart and Blaine Kortemeyer for StoryCorps at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Hart has since retired, and this year, Kortemeyer celebrated 25 years working at the National Memorial. Their interview was archived at the Library of Congress. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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