06/5/13

Did Grant Live At White Haven After His Presidency?

Visitors to White Haven (Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site) often ask if Grant returned to live there after his Presidency. The simple answer is, no, he never did. After that it gets more complicated and also quite interesting because the answer includes many stories and a bit of conjecture. One of those stories is the subject of a book that was published last year, A Disposition To Be Rich: How a small-town pastor’s son ruined an American president, brought on a Wall Street crash, and made himself the best-hated man in the United States by Geoffrey C. Ward.

The “small-town pastor’s son” was Ferdinand Ward, and the American president was, of course, Ulysses S. Grant (although the “ruin” actually occurred several years after Grant left the White House). The author, Geoffery C. Ward, is a direct descendent of Ferdinand Ward, and also happens to be a very successful writer and historian. This book isn’t just the story of how Ferdinand Ward financially ruined the Grants (and many others); for Geoffery Ward it is personal family history. Yet, he pulls no punches in telling the story, which involves one of the most devastating “Ponzi” schemes ever perpetrated. In fact, Ferdinand Ward was decades ahead of Ponzi himself.

The bottom line for Grant was that Ferdinand Ward cost him everything he owned, including Julia’s beloved White Haven. After 64 years of Dent/Grant ownership, the property was deeded over to William H. Vanderbilt to help pay down a personal loan Grant had secured from him. Ferdinand Ward had convinced Grant that the Marine Bank needed a short-term infusion of cash to avoid failure, which in turn would be devastating to their Wall Street financial concern, “Grant and Ward.” (The Grant in “Grant and Ward” was actually Grant’s second son, Ulysses, Jr., who had invited his father to join the firm after Grant failed to secure a third term nomination for President in 1880.) Grant had personally visited the railroad baron’s mansion to borrow the $150,000 Ward claimed was needed to keep the bank afloat. The bank failed anyway, and consequently so did “Grant and Ward,” which left Grant with no income and a $150,000 personal debt.

The swindle of Ferdinand Ward was crushing not only financially for Grant, but psychologically as well, and may have even been a contributing factor in the development of the cancer that would kill him the following year.

Despite the enormity of Ferdinand Ward’s swindle, it turned out to be difficult for legal authorities to convict him because many of those he had cheated did not want to come forward and admit they had been fooled.

For all the dirty details, read the book.

03/19/13

Who’s Buried In Grant’s Tomb?

If you’ve read the “about me” page of this blog you know I live St. Louis, but I am a product of the west coast. Last week, for the first time in my life, I visited New York City. I have wanted to get there for many years, and there were certain things I especially wanted to see; probably not all of which would be what a more typical New York tourist would want to see. Perhaps not surprisingly, number one on my list was General Grant National Memorial, or in more popular parlance, “Grant’s Tomb.”

At Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site I am often asked where Grant is buried. Sometimes a visitor will playfully ask, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” Well, to be precise, no one is buried in Grant’s Tomb. I can now personally attest that the sarcophagi of Ulysses and Julia can be viewed inside the immense mausoleum that was officially dedicated on April 27, 1897.

Visitors to Grant’s Tomb today may not be aware of the rather sordid modern history of the Tomb; how it was neglected, fell into disrepair, was covered in graffitti, became a place where the homelees lived, and where New York gangs fought gun battles. That history is partially documented here, including photos. Also, Joan Waugh’s book, U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth includes much on the Tomb’s history. I had the pleasure of a conversation with the NPS rangers at the site who told me stories that make one’s hair stand on end. It wasn’t too long ago that visitation was only around 10,000 annually and NPS rangers were actually afraid to go there. I am happy to report that has all changed now; according to the NPS ranger I spoke to, visitation is about 100,000 a year, and my wife and I felt entirely comfortable (in fact, we were in many parts of the city during our three days and nights and never once felt apprehensive or unsafe).

While much has been done, there is still more that needs to be done, as can be seen in the photos below. In particular, the mosaic sculptures which surround the Tomb are completely out of place. The Tomb is staffed by only three full time NPS employees, one of whom is on loan from Liberty Island while that site is still shut down due to Hurricane Sandy. The shortage of employees means the Tomb is frequently closed because the staff can’t cover both the visitor center and the tomb at the same time. The visitor center is actually a recent addition. It is housed in what used to be the public restrooms under the pavillion overlook. There is a gift shop, and a small interpretive room which has text panels, a few artifacts, and a video. Unfortunately, there was something wrong with the video equipment so I could not view the video. Also unfortunately, there were a few glaring mistakes in the text panels, and a few curious ommisions. For example, there is no mention of Grant and Ward. I would think the story of Grant’s financial debacle would be of prime interest to visitors to New York. I do like the site brochure, which highlights “Milestones of Grant’s Presidency” rather than focusing on Grant’s military achievements.

The former Women’s restroom under the overlook is now the entrance to the visitor center.

The Tomb is impressive evidence of the respect and admiration the American people had for the man who saved the Union. Personally though, I couldn’t help but think it is in a rather odd place. As Joan Waugh wrote, after Grant died there was competition over where he would be buried between various towns in Illinois, Ohio, and Washington, D. C. It was the family, primarily Julia, who chose the New York site. The tomb might have fared better over the years had it been placed elsewhere; my vote would probably be D. C., but that’s just my 21st century opinion. If I had been a 19th century New Yorker, perhaps I would have felt as did the New York Times: “A Most Fitting Burial Place: The Nation’s Greatest Hero Should Rest in the Nation’s Greatest City.”

The bullet hole under the wing of one of the eagles at the entrance testifies to the gritty past history of the Tomb.

Can you find the mistakes in this text panel?

Much has been done to rehabilitate Grant’s Tomb, but the work is not complete.

These mosaics need to go.

09/22/12

Having a Great Time!

“There Are But Two Parties Now…”

I have been thoroughly enjoying attending the 34th annual Mid- America Conference on History. I think my paper was well received. I have heard several excellent papers and have met some great people with whom I expect to maintain contact. Some of the highlights (and a lowlight):

In my session, Mark Neels presented a paper titled, And So My Political Life Has Closed: Edward Bates and the Republican Convention of 1860. Mark contends that Bates’ candidacy was de-railed in part because the German-Americans, mainly Carl Schurz and Gustavus Koerner, refused to support him due to his earlier involvement with the Know-Nothings.

Joan Stack’s presentation on newspaper portrayals of Nathaniel Lyon in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek was fascinating. She has a Phd. in Art History and was able to show how drawings of Lyon and the battle were modeled on paintings of religious scenes which would have evoked powerful reactions in mid-nineteenth century Americans.

Walter Ohlson presented a paper that was essentially a critical commentary on a book by Edward Ayers titled Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War. The book is a collection of essays designed to be used as a discussion guide. Ohlson found the chapter on Shiloh to be confusing and incomplete. I was not familiar with the book, but a couple of the professors in the room have used it and they also thought the chapter on Shiloh was less than satisfactory.

There was one presenter I took exception with. Timothy Wescott’s presentation, Legislators of the Twelfth Star, covered the make-up of the legislators chosen by the deposed Jackson government in Neosho in 1861, who represented Missouri in the Confederate government during the war. Throughout his presentation he kept referring to this governmnent and to the legislators as ”our” representatives. Also, at the beginning of his talk, he said the Hamilton Gamble provisional government was “federally imposed.” When I asked him to clarify that, his reponse was that Lyon had driven the elected Jackson government out of Jeff City and installed a pro-Union government. I told him that the provisional government was constituted by a convention of delegates elected by Missourians, that there were no representatives from Washington or from the Lincoln Administration, and the convention did not do its work at the point of federal bayonets. It was Missourians at the convention. His reponse: “We’ll have to disagree professionally.”

George Rable’s featured talk last night covered religion in the Civil War. Dr. Rable is an excellent speaker. He talked about how pervasive the idea of “providence’ was on both sides. Americans North and South believed in Divine Providence; that is that God has a plan and that everything happens for a reason. Both sides believed God was on their side, however, and they attempted to explain every victory or defeat in terms of the will of God. Victory was usually proof of God’s favor, defeat was usually proof of God’s chastisement for sin. Exactly what that sin was tended to be a matter of perspective, however.

I’ll soon be heading over to Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield to listen to another talk by Dr. Rable and then go on a tour of the battlefield led by friend and former professor, Dr. William G. Piston.

05/18/12

Dwight Pitcaithley on the Causes of the Civil War

05/2/12

Civil War to Civil Rights; Making the Connections

As I have noted in earlier posts, the National Park Service has committed to drawing connections between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. This post is about those connections.

In January of 1961, James Meredith, believing that he had a “Divine Responsibility to break White Supremacy in Mississippi,” applied to the all-white state university. His inevitable rejection led to a lawsuit that eventually reached the U. S. Supreme Court. In September, 1962, an Alabamian, Justice Hugo Black, handed down a ruling that upheld an earlier Circuit Court ruling that Meredith must be admitted without further delay. Governor Ross Barnett responded on statewide television, “We will not surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny.”

The 37 year-old head of the U. S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had been supportive of Meredith’s cause almost from the beginning. The response of Governor Barnett to the Court’s ruling drew battle lines between the federal government, the Governor, and the forces of white supremacy and segregation in Mississippi. Robert Kennedy began a series of phone conversations with the Governor that delved into the relationship of the state to the federal government. At one point Kennedy pointedly said: “Governor, you are a part of the United States,” to which Barnett replied, “We have been a part of the United States but I don’t know whether we are or not.” Kennedy asked, “Are you getting out of the Union?”

Unable to persuade the Governor that the Department of Justice intended to enforce the Court’s orders, Robert Kennedy eventually had to involve his brother, President John Kennedy. In the meantime, truckloads of white supremacists were coming into Oxford to stop Meredith from entering the University. The Kennedy administration began to worry that a few federal marshals wouldn’t be sufficient to protect Meredith. The last thing the Kennedys wanted to do was send in troops, but even phone conversations between the President himself and the Governor did not bring about the desired results.

At midnight Norbert Schlei of the Office of Legal Counsel came to the White House with a proclamation ordering persons obstructing justice in Mississippi to cease and disperse and an executive order federalizing the Mississippi State Guard. Kennedy took Schlei into a small study on an upper floor, sat down at a table and read the documents. After a moment he asked, “Is this pretty much what Ike signed in 1957 with the Little Rock thing?” Schlei pointed to a few refinements. Kennedy signed, snapped off the light and headed into the hall. Then he paused and rapped the table with his hand. “You know,” he said, “that’s General Grant’s table.” They said good night. As Schlei went down the stairs to tell waiting reporters what had happened, Kennedy suddenly sprinted to the top of the balustrade and called down to him, “Don’t tell them about General Grant’s table.”

The situation in Oxford grew considerably worse, without the full knowledge of the President. Meredith and the federal officials and marshals charged with protecting him and ensuring his registration to the University, found themselves holed up in the Lyceum, under siege by an angry armed mob after the state police were withdrawn. The federal marshals fired tear gas in response to thrown bricks and bottles and gunfire. Despite reports of deaths, and injuries to themselves, they were under strict orders not to shoot except to protect Meredith’s life. The President was reluctantly asked to send in the Army, but the Army took five hours to arrive. It was a wildly harrowing night for the federal officials in Oxford and for Robert Kennedy, who felt personally responsible for the Army’s delay.

Despite the violent resistance, Meredith was enrolled, and eventually graduated.

When I read about President Kennedy’s reference to Grant in Arthur Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and His Times, I wondered what exactly his thoughts were that night in the White House. Was he thinking just about General Grant’s role in putting down the rebellion? Or was he thinking about President Grant’s efforts to bring civil rights to all Americans?

04/11/12

Landing a National Park Service Job: My Own Story (Part Four)

Continued from yesterday’s post.

I am often asked by park visitors, “Does the NPS move you around from park to park?” or “Does the NPS assign you to a particular park?” The answer to these questions is, as a general rule, no. (There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.) However (I’ve already said this but it bears repeating!), the Park Service gets hundreds of applications for every opening, even the seasonal positions. Keep in mind that I am mainly talking about interpretive positions, which is what I am familiar with. The NPS employs people in lots of other capacities and some jobs are easier to get than others. For example, there always seems to be Law Enforcement positions open. The minimum qualifications for interpretive jobs are indeed minimal and everyone thinks they could do such an easy job as interpretive jobs appear to be. The practical effect is that limiting yourself to applying at only one park so severely limits your chances that you may never get hired. So as I’ve already said, you have to be willing to go where the opportunities are and hope that some day you land a permanent position wherever that might be. Once you have that permanent job, if you like the park and the job you can stay there forever. However, if you want to advance in the NPS, you usually will have to move to another park.

Jobs in the NPS have GS rankings. Generally speaking GS-4 is the lowest for interpretive positions, although I have seen a GS-3 Park Guide position advertised somewhere (can’t remember where.) ”Entry level” seasonal or permanent interpretive positions are usually either GS-4 or GS-5. The difference as that 4s are supposed to be provided with prepared programs by higher graded supervisors to present to visitors. They are not supposed to be expected to develop interpretive programs and are only expected to be able to consult secondary source materials. GS-5s, on the other hand, are supposed to be capable of developing interpretive programs based on primary source materials. These distinctions become blurred in practice. I know from experience that GS-4s often do the same job that GS-5s do.

In order to advance, to move up the GS scale, one must apply for advertised positions just as if one is applying for a new job. A park can rarely promote a current employee without advertising the higher graded position; opening the job to competition. This is why many NPS employees have worked at several parks during their career. The one big exception to this rule is the 5/7/9. If you land a 5/7/9 position, if you perform your duties satisfactorily, the park must promote you from GS-5 to 7 to 9 within a couple of years. See why I said I am envious of those friends of mine who got 5/7/9 positions through the SCEP? They got a permanent job without going through the competitive process and will be promoted to GS-9 without going through the competitive process.

I’ve applied for 5/7/9 positions, including positions on the Mall in D.C. Once, I was called for a phone interview, then never heard from them again. Interestingly, however, the announcement was open to “all sources,” meaning the public could apply. Applicants can be restricted several ways; mainly by restricting the applicants to “merit promotion” only. This is where “status” comes into play. You only get status by landing a permanent position. In a public announcement you can meet minimum qualification requirements either through experience or education. Because of my graduate degree, I automatically qualified for the GS-7 position. In other words, if I got a 5/7/9 under a public announcement I would jump from being the GS-4 that I am now to being a GS-7 just based on my education. However, under a “merit promotion” annnouncement you have to have “time in grade” to jump from one GS level to the next. I found this out the hard way. I applied for a 7/9 at Shiloh. They weren’t offering a 5/7/9, just a 7/9. I thought my graduate degree would qualify me as a 7 like it had for the Mall in D.C. position. Nope. Education only works like that under a public announcement. Under merit promotion I could not even apply for a 7 because I haven’t been a 5 long enough. Conceivably, someone with a graduate degree but no Park Service experience could jump into a 7 or even a 9 position, but I have to believe that would be extremely rare. By the way, officially, 4s and 5s are only “Park Guides.” You have to be a 5 in a 5/7/9 position or higher to actually be a “Park Ranger.” Confusing isn’t it? It gets more confusing.

After working as a Term GS-4 Park Guide for a year at U.S. Grant NHS, it was decided that the position would be made permanent. Remember, I couldn’t just be “given” the job. It had to be announced for competition. I’ve heard it said many times that if a park really wants someone they will find a way to get them. I don’t know that that is entirely true, but if you see an announcement that is very specific; that is the experience and knowledge requirements are very specific, or applications are only being accepted from the local commuting area, or through specific hiring programs, then the park probably already has someone in their sights.

I got the permanent job.

It took me from the winter of 2005 when I first applied at Lincoln Home to the winter of 2009 to land a permanent NPS job. It took working at four different parks. It took working a seasonal job, a student job, another seasonal job, and a term job. It took traveling half way across the country and back. It took applying for numerous positions I didn’t get. It took lots of study, lots of money, and lots of sacrifice. My closest family is 4 hours away. My wife and I lived in our fifth-wheel trailer, with all our furniture and belongings in storage for three and a half years. All of this cost us a lot of money. And I only have a GS-4 Park Guide position! Still, in many ways I count myself lucky. I have a permanent job in a beautiful park where I get to talk about one of my favorite subjects. I know there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people out there who would like to have my job. Many have worked seasonally longer than I did. My veterans preference points helped me get my job, but I believe I am more than qualified.

So, that’s my story. If you have been following it and have questions, please ask. I’ll be happy to try to answer them as best I can.

04/10/12

Landing a National Park Service Job: My Own Story (Part Three)

How to trap beavers. Ft. Vancouver. Summer '08.

Continued from yesterday’s post.

So I had a term GS-4 position at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. A term position is one year of employment, although the park has the option of extending the term up to four years. The benefits are essentially the same as a permanent position with one big exception – you don’t get “status.” Status is what allows you to apply for positions that are not open to the general public. Of course, you don’t know if you’ll be employed beyond a year either, so you can’t really “settle in.” We found a Mobile Home/RV park to park our trailer in. My wife managed to find a part-time job, and I continued to look at USAJobs daily.

I applied for permanent positions that were open to the public. Usually I would “make the cert.” Here’s what that means as I understand it: When you submit your application it usually goes to the Office of Personnel Management first – OPM. OPM looks at your application, assigns you a score, then sends a certain number of the top applications to the park. If you do not meet the minimum qualifications you get an email saying you don’t qualify. If you do meet the minimum qualifications but there are other applicants with scores higher than yours, your application doesn’t get certified and doesn’t get sent to the park for consideration. I’ve already explained that the scores range up to 100 unless you are a preference eligible veteran.

This is where I believe the real problem lies.

Very few parks are using KSAs anymore like I had to fill out for Lincoln Home. Instead they are using a questionaire which allows the applicant to self evaluate. You answer a series of questions and fill in bubbles from “I’ve never done this and don’t know anything about it” to “I’m an expert and know everything about this.” (I’m paraphasing, but that is essentially correct.) Self-evaluation can be very tricky for many reasons and the questions often seem to have little bearing on the job duties. One questionaire that is frequently used asks, “How many times did you make the honor roll in high school?” Really?? High school, for me, was almost forty years ago. Some of the questions ask if you have experience or expertise in simple tasks like stocking brochures. Even if you haven’t actually stocked brochures it seems silly to say so. Who wouldn’t be able to stock brochures? Anyone who has filled out these questionaires knows what I’m talking about. This leads to the honesty part of the equation.

Most of us want to be honest. But it is clear that if you don’t mark yourself “Expert” on nearly every question, you won’t make the cert. You may as well not even apply. Even with my veterans’ points I was scoring in the 90s and not making the cert (or making it but not very high on the list). At one point I called OPM about an application and the person I talked to there basically told me I needed to be sure I wasn’t selling myself short. In so many words she was saying I had to mark myself higher even if I wasn’t sure I was an expert and let the hiring official decide if I really was or not. Your application, your resume and supporting documents, are supposed to verify the answers you give to the questionaire. However, I don’t believe OPM even looks at the supporting documents. (If someone reading this can tell me different, please do so.) Instead, OPM totals up the points based on the questionaire, and sends the top applications to the park. The park then has to look at the top candidates’ supporting documents, call the references, and decide if the candidate is as much of an “expert” at everything as he or she has claimed.

You can see the problems here. If veterans mark themselves as experts on all the questions and then get preference points also, they go straight to the top of the list. I’m not necessarily saying the vets are being dishonest. As I said, self-evaluation can be very tricky. We all want to at least get an interview. I applied for a position at a major Civil War battlefield. I made the cert, but didn’t get called. I called the park. The Chief of Interp said I was the type of candidate they were looking for, but there were several vets ahead of me on the cert list. Their supporting resume and documents didn’t support their score. The problem for the park was/is that the top candidates must be sent a letter detailing why the park feels they are not qualified. The candidate then has (iirc) 30 days to appeal the park’s decision. It can therefore take months for the park to get down the list to a candidate they actually want. In this case (I was told), the park threw out the entire cert (didn’t hire anyone from the list), and instead hired a student under the SCEP program; a guy who was working on his Phd. I was told that I might never get a permanent position through the competitive process; that I should go back to school somewhere and try to get into the SCEP program. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I’d already spent a small fortune in time and money chasing this rather late-life career.

As I said, STEP and SCEP have gone away. Some people think it’s because the parks were using those programs to specifically avoid hiring unqualified veterans. But, in all honesty, giving a student a permanent position without having to go through the competitive process didn’t seem quite fair to me either. Of course, if I had been offered a SCEP position I certainly would have taken it! There is a new program for students called “Pathways.” I don’t know the details, but apparently it has a veterans’ preference component. One thing should be noted. The National Park Service is regulated by the President and by Congress. It is they who enact these types of programs and they do not want to be accused of sending young men and women off to war and then abandoning them when they come home.

I also applied for a 5/7/9 position on the Mall in D.C.

I think I will stop here and pick this up again tomorrow.

04/9/12

Landing a National Park Service Job: My Own Story (Part Two)

This is continued from yesterday’s post.

During my graduate program at MSU I tried to take as many 19th Century History courses as possible. In addition, I was particularly interested in Ulysses S. Grant, so when I could I did book reviews on Grant books and wrote term papers on Grant topics. For instance, for my American West class I wrote a paper on Grant’s Peace Policy, and for my Civil War and Reconstruction class I wrote about Grant’s relationship with Charles Sumner, Santo Domingo, and the election of 1872. I opted not to write a thesis, although my seminar paper on Wilson’s Creek in History and Memory ended up being thesis length anyway. I maintained a 4.0 G.P.A while working fulltime at the battlefield. I knew though, that my employment would end upon graduation, so I kept a close eye on USAJobs for possibilities.

I applied for a temporary one year GS-4 Park Guide position at Arlington House. I thought I was applying for a term position. Term positions include health benefits which I had not had for years. I didn’t realize that there is even such an animal as a temporary one year position. I thought the jobs were either 1039 seasonal, term (1-4 years), or permanent. I was wrong. Parks can hire on a temporary basis, keep you as long as they want or let you go when they want, and not provide benefits. Ever since, I’ve wondered why a park would ever advertise a 1039 or a term position, but I’ve actually seen very few temporary positions announced. At any rate, I was offered the job at Arlington House.

I was to report a few months later, after I had completed my graduate program. In the meantime I continued to look for better opportunities. I applied for and was offered a GS-5 seasonal position at Appomattox. I wanted to go there, but it turned out the job was only going to last a couple of months. I just couldn’t afford to risk being out of work that soon. I then applied for and was offered a GS-5 seasonal position at Ft. Vancouver. For personal family reasons, because it was a GS-5, and because Grant had been stationed there, I really wanted to accept, but this one was only going to last through the summer; about four months. So I called the Site Manager at Arlington House to talk about my dilemma. Miraculously, he told me to go to Ft. Vancouver for the summer and he would still bring me on afterwards. He said the experience I would gain at Ft. Vancouver would benefit Arlington House when I got there.

I have no doubt that my 5 points veterans preference helped me get these offers, but I also believe I was well qualified. In fact, I have applied for several positions that I did not get. A couple of them still puzzle me. For example, at this same time two term GS-5 positions were announced at Lincoln Home. I applied thinking I should have a great chance at getting one. I didn’t. I know one of the guys who did. He was a young college grad who had been a seasonal with me in 2006 and had returned for the 2007 season. I was now close to getting my MA, had worked at Wilson’s Creek for almost a year, and I was a preference eligible veteran, which he was not. But he got one of those positions. He is a great guy, very capable, and again, the NPS was lucky to have him. I count him as a good friend. He worked two years on that term appointment, applied for a permanent position that he was well qualified for and didn’t get it. He’s now out of the Park Service, and it’s the NPS’s loss.

If you are reading this and you don’t know about or understand veteran’s preference points in federal hiring, let me say this: when you submit an application you earn a score of up to 100 points depending on your qualifications and experience. Veterans who have served during specific time periods when the country was engaged in a conflict get an additional 5 points and handicapped veterans get ten. So a preference eligible veteran can get 105 or 110 points but the most a non-veteran, no matter how qualified, can get is 100. See here:

http://www.fedshirevets.gov/job/vetpref/index.aspx

Theoretically, a well qualified and experienced non-veteran could get a job over a minimally qualified veteran. I say “theoretically” because that doesn’t seem to be what is happening and I will try to explain why I believe that is the case later. While I’m on the subject, there is also a program called VRA, Veteran’s Recruitment Act, through which certain veterans, basically those who have actually been in war zones, can be hired without going through the competitive process. See here:

http://www.fedshirevets.gov/job/shav/index.aspx

I got my M.A. in history in May of 2008, and my wife and I hit the road to Ft. Vancouver, pulling our fifth-wheel trailer behind us. Just our luck, fuel prices skyrocketed that year. In Vancouver we found a decent RV Park not far from the park. I thoroughly enjoyed my summer working at Ft. Vancouver; in fact, I would love to go back there. The park does a number of special events each year, there is lots of living history, and it is a beautiful area. I definitely benefitted from my experience there. Unfortunately, my wife was never able to find a temporary job while we were out there, so our finances continued to suffer.

While at Ft. Vancouver, I continued to watch USAJobs. Lo and behold, a term GS-4 Park Guide position opened at U.S. Grant NHS in St. Louis. I applied. I still had the job at Arlington House, but the Grant job was an actual term position with health benefits and in a much lower cost of living area. Besides, truth be told, I was much more comfortable with the idea of interpreting Grant than Lee. I got the job. I had to call ArIington House to tell them I wasn’t coming after all that time. I felt rather bad about it, but… In mid September 2008 we headed back to Missouri. I honestly believe that I was overqualified for the job. I was going from a GS-5 back to a GS-4, but it was term so that was a step in the right direction. Not long after I started there the Chief of Interp told me he had several equally qualified applicants and that the deciding factor was the last digit of my Social Security number. Somehow, I had the lucky number. Wow.

More tomorrow.

04/8/12

Landing a National Park Service Job: My Own Story (Part One)

If you have been following this blog or have read the “About Me” page you know that I am an employee of the National Park Service at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site in St. Louis. I am a permanent employee with “status” (more on this later). My official job title is GS-4 Park Guide. I spend my days as a front line interpreter at the visitor center desk, giving tours of the historic home, selling merchandise in the gift shop, and all that goes into dealing with the public face to face. I am often asked by visitors (as I’m sure most Park Guides and Rangers are), “How does a person get a Park Service job?” In relation to this question, Mannie at My Year of Living Rangerously, and Kevin at Civil War Memory have invited discussion regarding the preference given to veterans in the federal government’s hiring process. With some trepidation, I am going to wade into this discussion here, but please understand that I am not in human resources, nor am I in a supervisory position with hiring authority. What follows is simply my personal story and my personal perceptions of the NPS hiring process.

I was raised on the west coast. I have loved history since I can remember. For a number of reasons, my high school grades weren’t that great. A year after graduating, not having the money or the inclination to go to college, I signed up for four years in the Marine Corps. It was August 1974, and my platoon was the last to go through boot camp that received the National Defense ribbon for Viet Nam. If you are not familiar with the ND ribbon, it is awarded during times when there is a war going on and a serviceman or woman might find themselves in a combat situation. By 1974, of course, Viet Nam was winding down and I never went there. In fact, I never left the states. After three months of boot camp at San Diego and Pendleton, I spent nine months at Twenty-Nine Palms and then three years at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington State. While I am proud of having served, I have always said that was the longest four years of my life. I learned, I matured, but I could hardly wait to get out. I began to take college courses offered on the base.

Following my discharge, in the fall of 1978 I started college full time. While attending college I worked 30-40 hours a week at menial jobs and relied on VA benefits. But what to major in? I loved history, but the only thing I knew a history major could do was teach, and teaching jobs were scarce. Public history never occured to me. The NPS has relatively few historic sites in the west. When I thought of the Park Service, I thought of Smokey the Bear in the woods. That’s not what I wanted to do. Instead, I had this crazy idea that I would get into politics; first by majoring in Political Science, then by going to law school. (You’ll think I’m nuts, but at the time Jerry Brown was Governor of my home state of California and his girlfriend was a very hot young Linda Ronstadt. I didn’t think it could get any better than that!) Besides, Poli Sci meant lots of history anyway.

I graduated from University of Washington with my BA in Poli Sci in 1982 and headed for Law School at Gonzaga University in Spokane. By this time I had married and already had a couple kids. After my first year of Law School my VA benefits ran out and I decided continuing in Law School with a family to support wasn’t financially feasible. So much for ever being a politician! I ended up in the truck rental and leasing business working for several different companies and eventually moved back to California. I had only limited success in the truck business and found myself out of work when a recession hit in the mid nineties. Needing any kind of job I could get, I answered an ad in the paper for school bus driver training and eventually got into charter/tour bus driving.

This was my first exposure to Public History. The first few years I had a job picking up passengers at the Amtrak station in San Luis Obispo, taking them on a city tour, and up to Hearst Castle, all the while giving the history of the area and the Hearst story. Eventually, I drove busses all over the west, including through several National Parks. By 2003, I was tired of being on the road all the time, and for other reasons also, I moved to Branson, Missouri. In late 2004 I decided to enroll at Missouri State to pursue an MA in history. I still didn’t know exactly what I would do with it, but I loved history and by now I was at least aware that there were public history jobs (although I didn’t realize there are graduate programs specifically for public history). After completing three courses, including one in 19th Century American history (my favorite period), I stumbled into USAJobs online for the first time and discovered a seasonal job opening at Lincoln Home National Historic Site. I applied and was one of ten seasonals hired in the spring of 2006.

In 2006 Lincoln Home was using KSA (Knowledge Skills and Abilities) statements. An applicant had to actually write out answers to qualifying questions. I’m sure my veteran’s preference points helped, but there were only a couple of us out of ten that had been veterans. My college courses and my job experience, I’m pretty sure, got me the job. I was much older than everyone else. Eight of the ten were young college students or just out of college. A couple of them had already worked a season at another NPS site. I have been told that there are certain parks that are considered “gateway” parks for employment because they hire a lot of seasonals every year; The Mall in D.C., Independence in Philly, Lincoln Home…

Springfield, Illinois is about a 5 1/2 hour drive from Branson. I had a small fifth-wheel trailer that I hauled over there and found a campground not too far from Lincoln Home to set up in. My wife stayed in our home in Branson and I would drive back and forth on weekends. The cost of this situation was such that I really didn’t make much money, but I was gaining the experience and deciding I really wanted an NPS job. This was a seasonal position; a 1039 position, which means you can only work 1,039 hours in a given year. If you work 40 hours a week, as I did, that is six months. Some seasonals spread those hours out by working part time. I believe you have to be placed on “intermittent status” to do that. Also, if you are on intermittent status, the park can bring you back each year for a new season, another 1039 hours, without going through the competitive process all over. I was asked at Lincoln Home if I wanted to come back in 2007. I initially said yes, but I returned to classes at MSU, and I later decided to not work at all for a while and get my MA quicker by attending classes full time. I also applied for a couple of positions at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield which is near Missouri State. I didn’t get them, but I learned more about the NPS hiring process and I made contacts at the park. (IIRC, at least one of those positions went to a disabled vet.)

After seven months of not working while attending classes, I desperately needed to get back to work. I got a job at the Titanic Museum in Branson. More public history. I enjoyed it, but I still wanted to work for the Park Service (better pay and benefits and 1912 is not quite the 19th century). Fortunately for me, my contacts at Wilson’s Creek and my experience at Lincoln Home paid off. The Chief of Interp at WICR called to say he was looking to fill a GS-4 STEP position and would I be interested? STEP, Student Temporary Employment Program. The park could hire anyone who was at least a half-time student without going through the competitive process. I worked full time at Wilson’s Creek for almost a year while I finished my graduate program. The problem with a STEP position is that you can only work while you are a student. Once you stop being a student you are out. Of course, I was paid while gaining more experience. The SCEP program (Student Career Employment Program) allowed a park to hire a student non-competitively and upon graduation convert the student to permanent status. I once thought the park had to guarantee a position to the student upon graduation, but apparently that wasn’t the case. In fact, the park could ‘shop’ the student around to other parks. I know a few lucky people who got permanent positions through the SCEP. Not me. I know a couple of them who got 5/7/9 positions (more on this later). I’m really envious of them, but I will say they are wonderful, bright, hard-working people and the NPS is lucky to have them. The STEP and SCEP programs have come to an end, but more on that later also.

One thing I learned very quickly was that competition for NPS jobs, especially interpretation jobs, is extremely fierce. The NPS gets hundreds of applications for every opening. Therefore, very few people get permanent positions without having worked seasonally first. You have to be willing to go where the opportunities are. If you have your heart set on a particular park, you may never be hired. With this in mind, my wife and I sold our house, put all our belongings in storage, and bought a larger fifth-wheel trailer. (By this time the kids were grown and on their own.) I was willing to go where I had to go. But where would that be?

Are you beginning to see what I went through to get my job?

More tomorrow.

03/18/12

Should This Be The Future Of NPS Interpretation?

Last summer I wrote a blog post, Interpreting America’s Natural and Cultural Resources, in which I related my understanding of what “interpretation” is. I have been in Public History for many years, including working for the National Park Service for a total of more than five years at four different historic sites. I have given countless guided tours; house tours, battlefield tours, city walking tours, and bus tours. I have presented living history programs as a Civil War soldier, an 18th century fur trader, woodworker, and baker; a 19th century railroad worker, and a 19th century politician. I’ve read a number of books and magazine articles on interpretation and I’ve completed on-line courses in interpretation. Let me say up front that I think interpretive skills are most certainly important.

I’m writing this in response to a recent post by John Rudy over at Interpreting the Civil War. The blog is a joint effort of John Rudy and Jake Dinkelaker. They are a couple of very smart guys with an obvious passion for history and I often find their blog to be quite interesting. The particular post in question discusses how best to communicate with a modern audience. John shared a music video that addresses the history of women’s rights. It is an entertaining video, but is this style of “interpretation” something that should be adopted by the NPS? You can watch the video here or at Interpreting the Civil War.

(If the following text is red, click on the blog title, Yesterday…and Today, above to get it back to black. The text is getting caught in the video imbed somehow.)

John had this to say in a comment:

A public historian’s job is not to provide History. History is, in the end, a product produced by the academy for the academy and nothing more. The public historian, instead provides interpretive opportunities based in historical settings and using the experiences of the people of the past. We offer people a glimpse into the past, an opportunity not to simply learn about the past but to viscerally understand and inhabit it. I take umbrage at your denigration [of] this product (and by extension any product) for, “only going for an emotional response.” Repeating facts and figures AT a crowd, dictating AT THEM endless litanies of quotes and statistics will NEVER help them understand anything in the sites and places we hold dear. Helping them feel the raw human emotion these places hold creates stewards, not simply helping them to know what happened in them. Interpretation based solely in intellectual connections is far less successful at forging meaningful visitor experiences than that which incorporates, highlights and places center stage universal emotional connections.

This is where I have to disagree: A public historians’ job, any historians’ job for that matter, is to provide history. It’s great if I can help a visitor make BOTH an emotional and an intellectual connection to the site. But, if I have a choice, I’d prefer to help them make an intellectual connection; I’d rather they learn something. I’d rather they say, “Wow, I didn’t know that before!” I’d rather they leave believing that a historic site is a place to learn, not necessarily to be entertained, and that they become stewards because they think the site provides important lessons in history, not entertainment. I disagree with the assertion that “facts and figures… NEVER help them understand anything in the sites and places we hold dear.” It’s all in how those “facts and figures” are presented. Furthermore, using quotes, the actual words of those we are interpreting, helps establish our credibility; we are presenting actual history, not something we’ve just made up. I don’t know enough about the history of women’s rights to know if the video is accurate, but that isn’t really my point here. I could have learned a lot more in the time it took me to watch that video if it had been a straightforward history video instead of a dance video. I will say, however, that I tend not to trust information I get from dance videos, which leads me to this:

I don’t believe we need to “dumb down” our presentations to properly interpret historic sites. I believe we have more of a responsibility to present accurate history than to entertain. I do not believe we fail to help visitors make emotional and/or intellectual connections to these sites by providing “facts and figures.” John compares this video with videos made for children, which I don’t think is an apt comparison. Do we assume our adult visitors have the learning capabilities of children? John says, “History is, in the end, a product produced by the academy for the academy and nothing more.” I say that’s balderdash. Public history should never be divorced from academic history; the two should be linked, entwined, joined at the hip. Would we say that interpretive programs at the Grand Canyon, Mammoth Caves, or Redwood National Forest shouldn’t be based on sound geology, biology, etc.?

It is my personal belief that there is far too much emphasis put on “interpretation” in public history today which too often leads to an almost complete lack of emphasis on “knowledge of the resource.” I’ve had this discussion with several of my colleagues and each time I try to make the point that a person can have all the interpretive training in the world, but if that person doesn’t know anything about what they’re interpreting, that person can’t interpret! I’m all for helping visitors make “emotional connections” to the site, but interpretation should not be misinformation. We need to be sure we are providing accurate history, not just “touchy-feely” history. Visitors often know when they are talking to someone who knows their subject versus someone who does not. I’ve seen comments on blogs and on facebook that reflect this. One NPS historian sadly said that you can’t always walk into a park and expect that person in grey and green to know what they’re talking about. I’m going out on a limb here, but, again, I think that’s because there is often too much emphasis on “interpretation” and not enough emphasis on knowledge. In addition, it’s one thing to have a wonderful “interpretive” product, be it a talk, a video, or whatever, but when the visitor begins asking in-depth questions, what does the highly trained interpreter with little to no knowledge do?

As in all things, there has to be a balance. Ultimately, it is important to have both interpretive skills and knowledge. One person I know who has thirty plus years in the NPS, told me that in his experience it’s like a pendulum; for a while there is an emphasis on getting people into the parks with knowledge (academic history) until it’s decided that communication skills are lacking. Then there is an emphasis on interpretive skills until it is decided there is a lack of knowledge…and so it goes.

I appreciate that John is thinking “outside the box.” I appreciate new ways of teaching, which is what I believe good interpretation actually is, and maybe this video could be effective in some situations; (the creator of the video provided a couple of ideas on how to use it as a teaching tool, see here), but I simply disagree with John’s idea of effective interpretation and the job of a public historian. So, what do you think? If you are a teacher, would this be something you might use in a classroom? If you are an interpreter can you see a use for this in a park?

Yesterday…and Today

Explorations in American History

Category Archives: National Park Service