Which park policy areas did you target for change when you arrived at Crater Lake? How many could you address in your first year here?
First, we had to get the people on board that we didn’t have before. We had to get those people on board that gave us the ability to compete in the National Park Service. And we didn’t have them. We didn’t have them in the ranger division, we didn’t have them in interpretation, we didn’t have them in administration. We had Frank Whittaker in maintenance (12), but that was all, We had nobody else around him. We had Elaine. We simply did not have the horses capable of competing in the National Park Service. We had some. I’m not saying every single person. I don’t mean that. But as a group [we had problems.
Okay. When did Jon Jarvis arrive?
He was there when I got there. Jarvis was absolutely invaluable (13). Absolutely. He set the stage for many wonderful things that we see today at Crater Lake.
And you had to have the infrastructure to be effective?
Yes. And there wasn’t much around him. So we had to have the people on board, capable of competing in the National Park Service. We’ve already talked about housing, I think, and having good places work. We had to have housing. We had to have equal focus on places to work. You can’t expect people to work in a damn tent and we had some pretty awful stuff. It was awful. Talk to Maureen [Briggs] sometime and she’ll tell you about how awful things were (14). And they were.
That’s where the rehabilitation of the buildings came in?
Yes. We had to have buildings that people could work in. If you remember, the ranger building, the one they are in now, wasn’t occupied (15). Rat Hall was kind of it because the Headquarters building was an absolute abomination (16). We had to have those things with which to work, whether it be – my God, we didn’t have a good typewriter in the Headquarters building! We did not. We had a couple data point computers, but we did not have a decent typewriter in the Headquarters building, let alone anywhere else in the park. That’s how bad it was. It was buying typewriters. It was buying computers. s&e. We had to have tools to work in the shop. Hell, we didn’t have tools down there. We had to have cars. We had to have equipment. So that was the thing. You had to have people. You had to have places for people to live. You had to have places for people to work. And you had to have the things that people work with.
