Milestones like the 25th anniversary of Southern Loggin' Times provide opportunity to reflect on the past, reminding us of where we've been and perhaps offering insight as to where we're headed. Through the years, SLT editors have trudged up and down many a skid trail from Florida to Virginia, Georgia  to Texas. Even the females amongst us have sweated bucket-loads in heat visibly radiating off red clay roads and various machinery that grace a logger's workplace. We've swatted at gnats and bees while peering through camera lenses. We've huddled under flimsy rain gear and inside loader cabs, and sloshed through 
mudholes big enough to swallow a person, and hitched rides on machinery which took us into places that made us long for home. All this just to get a glimpse of the man who tackles the challenge of supplying wood products for a supplying wood products for a hungry public. 
  Such reflection brings to mind some of industry's notables of the past 25 years. The following group, as compiled by this magazine's editors, are representative of the hundreds of men and women whose contributions in one way or another have helped to shape this industry, particularly in the past 25 years. As you read, take note of the interweaving paths of many of these men, creating, if you will, the very fabric of the Southern logging industry. 

As a child growing up in Charleston, SC, entrepreneur Bill Boyce, owner of Boyce Enterprises, formed a lot of negative impressions about loggers and their profession. As an adult, he got to know a few of them up close and discovered that loggers, like every profession, have their good, bad and ugly. Luckily, he met the good -- Larry and Carol Connelly, owners of Walterboro Forest Products, Walterboro, SC. This friendship, plus his involvement as a volunteer in the Children's Miracle Network (CMN) Telethon, sparked an idea that has spread around the country. It has benefited millions of sick children in 24 states while also putting a positive spin on public perception of the timber industry. 
  The idea for loggers to join efforts to raise funds for CMN took shape around the Connelly`s dinner table in 1988. During that first discussion, the name Log a Load for Kids was born. Boyce and Connelly enlisted Rainey Evans, a local celebrity and telethon coordinator for Medical University of South Carolina. Together they presented the idea to the South Carolina Forestry Assn. Originally, the objective was for each logger to donate the equivalent of one load of logs to the hospital of the logger's choice. The concept had all the right ingredients--it was a worthwhile cause; it appealed to the logger's strong family commitment; funds benefited local area children's hospitals; and it promoted a much-needed positive image for the industry as a whole. 
 With just two months to organize the program, promote it and secure the pledges, Boyce headed up the project and raised $20,000 the first year. The second year, Boyce and Charles Wright of Stone Container Corp co-chaired the program and doubled the funds raised. Then former SCFA staff member Paul Howe spread the good word about what South Carolina was doing when he joined the American Pulpwood Assn. Before long, other states were joining the cause. 
  The concept has taken on national proportions now, encompassing 24 states and raising $2 million in 1997. 
  Boyce is totally dumbfounded and in awe of everybody who has fertilized the seed he planted. His part in it, he emphasizes, was just a stroke of luck. Credit, he stresses, belongs to the Connellys and Paul Howe, who took the idea to the national level. 
  Though he hasn't been as involved in recent years, Boyce is now working on some new promotion ideas with APA's National Advisory Committee. He has also set up a websile for Log A Load and is in the process of setting up a fax newsletter to forestry companies.  The website address is http.//www.charleston.net/org/logaload. Send e-mail to logaload@Rocketmail.com.