CCC notable alumni
- Hyman G. Rickover, 4-star Admiral, former Corps Area Commander
- Raymond Burr, actor, former enrollee
- Archie Moore, Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, former enrollee
- Robert Mitchum, actor, former enrolee
- Edward R. Roybal, politician, former enrollee
- Chuck Yeager, test pilot (first human to break the sound barrier), former enrollee
- Stan Musial, baseball player, former enrollee
- Walter Matthau, actor, former enrollee
- Red Schoendienst, baseball player/manager, former enrollee
- Conrad L. Wirth, U.S. administrator, supervisor of CCC Program for NPS
- Aldo Leopold, ecologist, environmentalist, former technical forester
- David “Stringbean” Akeman, country music singer
- Archie Green, folklorist
- Hubert D. Humphreys, Louisiana historian
We just discovered this list of famous men who passed through the Civilian Conservation Corp in the 1930s on there way to notable careers. Mike Toomey of The Friends Of Massachusetts State Forest and Parks Network alerted us to this list and to the fact that they just held an 80th anniversary celebration of the CCC in Massachusetts state parks, and some of the local CCC alumni showed up, still looking fit. The event was reported on in a story in the Milford Daily News (the photo below is from that story). Mike also wanted us to note the list of CCC camps in Massachusetts, which is part of a larger resource on CCC camps across the country posted on the website of group “CCC Legacy”. Alas, the Living New Deal hasn’t yet had the person-power to transfer all that valuable information into our archive and map — any volunteers??!
My grandfather was the CCC and was stationed in California when WWII was declared. They all went to bed one night in the CCC and the next morning they were in the US Army! He took the train back east for training and ultimately on a ship to England and fought in France and Belgium.