July 19, 1966 
Dr. R. L. Pyle 
Honolulu, Hawaii 
Dear Bob: 
We have been advised that Ken Balcomb is 1-A now, and this more 
than likely means he will be immediately drafted. I wrote a letter 
to his draft board saying that he would be out of the country until 
August 26, but I feel that induction notice will probably be waiting 
for him when he gets off that ship. 
The extra copy of this letter is for you to send along to 
Dick Crossin if you so wish. I know that Dick is counting on coming 
back to Washington (via Duluth and the AOU meeting), and he probably 
will wish to reassign work on the second half of the SIC trip as we 
will have to count on Balcomb’s not being with us much longer. There 
is a possibility that we might be able to send in more information 
on Balcomb which the draft board might reconsider. I think, however, 
that little or nothing can be done. 
Since this is also of interest to Dick, I will report in this 
same letter that we are still negotiating for the Boston whaler 
from a firm in San Francisco. This firm is accustomed to shipping 
to the Pacific, and the salesman is now looting into boat schedules 
out of San Francisco to see l) if he can get the boat and 2) if he 
can locate a Currituck Boston whaler1 He has one coming in about 
August 10 or 11, but if that should be delayed, there would be no 
way of getting it out in time for the SIC trip. Should we go ahead 
with the boat purchase even if they can't guarantee delivery before 
August 25 ? 
Best regards, 
Church 
