When
Amy and I got married in the fall of 1991, I asked my parents as a wedding gift
to get us two round-trip airplane tickets to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’d been to New Mexico a few times but Amy
had not. My parents obliged and we were
off. We had planned about a two-week
travel circuit that would take us all over the Four Corners area. My friend Tom, who had driven all the way up
from Arizona to attend our nuptials, graciously offered to take a bunch of our
camping gear back with him and meet up with us along the way. And so it went.
We
flew to Albuquerque and spent several days in romantic B&Bs in Albuquerque,
Santa Fe and Taos, taking in all the sights and falling in love with the Land
of Enchantment. We had perfect weather
the entire time. From Taos we drove up
to Durango where we met Tom, and he gave us our camping gear so that we could
continue on to Canyonlands where we spent several days getting lost in the
slickrock, immersing ourselves in the Colorado Plateau autumn. We eventually packed up the camping gear and
sent it home, returned to Albuquerque via El Morro NM, and I returned to my job
at Whiskeytown. But we had been bitten
by the bug, and thereafter I spent lots of time looking for National Park jobs in New Mexico that I could transfer ito.
As
luck would have it, several years later in 1994, I saw a vacancy for Petroglyph
National Monument, a relatively new national park area on the outskirts of
Albuquerque. I applied for the position
and, son of a gun, if I didn’t get the job….as Chief of Interpretation and
Cultural Resources. By April of that
year, we were back in New Mexico and absolutely thrilled to be there. The job had its challenges as Petroglyph was an
urban park right on the edge of rapid development along Albuquerque’s west
side. The City wanted to keep expanding
and we were in the way. But we had a dynamic
young superintendent and a motivated staff, so for the first two years things
went relatively well…until our superintendent got a better offer elsewhere and
moved on.
His
replacement was an Hispanic female with no prior supervisory experience. But it didn’t matter to us at first because
as a staff we knew we could keep the ball rolling and make her look good. Suffice to say, that didn’t work out. Early on she asserted herself to the staff,
asking for strict schedules and subservience to her will. And it became obvious, as well, that she had
a real chip on her shoulder for Anglo males.
We began to feel her wrath daily.
She was particularly bothered by my air of independence. She had me move my office from the visitor center
where my staff was, to the administrative office where she could keep an eye on
me. Then she began to make up lies about
me not attending meetings and not doing what she asked me to do. She was becoming the Captain Queeg of the
good ship Petroglyph just as I was taking
on the responsibilities of becoming a new father once again.
By
the summer of 1998, the writing was on the wall. She was out to get me. Several of the staff
had already moved on. I began compiling
a file on her, and calling the regional office for help. Everyone on the staff was miserable at this
point. We even got a visit from a
Regional investigative team who spent several days interviewing all of us, but
in the end they were powerless to do anything.
Meanwhile, I was applying for vacancies all over the place. I was a
GS-12 at this point and looking for GS-9 positions anywhere that would get me
out. But every time my superintendent
got a call about me, she denigrated my performance. But then fate stepped in.
I
had applied for a vacancy with the BLM at Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas. It
was a great job and I even got a chance for a face to face interview. And it turned out that my evil boss was on
vacation at the time and unavailable for comment. So I got the job and proudly walked into her
office upon her return to let her know that I was leaving. Instead of congratulating me, she made the
next several weeks miserable, not allowing me annual leave to help pack my
things. Not approving travel. She was a bitch to the bitter end. But I made it out. And I sadly had to leave the NPS culture
behind.
As
it turned out, the BLM seemed to recognize my abilities and quickly promoted me
to manager of Red Rock, giving me my grade back as well as my pride, and from
there things only got better. But
Petroglyph will always be the stain on my career. And that superintendent? She was demoted a few years later for using
her government credit card to pay off thousands of dollars in gambling debts.
And I eventually got the dream assignment that brought me to Grand Junction,
Colorado.
