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Lundy happy with progress at Crater Lake park

Herald and News

Klamath Falls, Oregon
November 12, 2007

By LEE JUILLERAT

H&N Regional Editor
Chuck Lundy’s epiphany came in the 1970s, while making cement forms on a construction job in Massachusetts.

“It occurred to me,” he remembers, “I wasn’t cut out for doing that for the next 30 to 35 years.”

Lundy’s decision spurred him to enroll at Northern Arizona University, where he pursued a degree in recreation resource management. In the summers, he worked as a seasonal ranger at Wupatki and Sunset Crater Volcanic National Monuments.

After graduating in 1976, he worked as a backcountry ranger at Bandelier National Monument, launching a National Park Service career that end Jan. 3, when he retires as one of Crater Lake National Park’s longest-serving superintendents.

“I’m pretty happy with where the park is and where I am,” says the 58 year-old Lundy. “It’s been a great career.”

His Crater Lake stint began in November 1998. He took over as superintendent at a time when park morale and relations with neighboring communities were unusually low.

“When I moved here, I knew I would retire here,” says Lundy, who has been superintendent at Capitol Reef National Park in Utah.

He has no plans to move from Klamath Falls, not with his wife, Maureen, teaching at Pelican Elementary and two of their four children – Wyatt, a senior, and Audra, a sophomore – at Klamath Union High.

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