Park News September 11,2008

Everglades National Park

While preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Ike on Sunday, September 7th, rangers received a report of a downed helicopter in Florida Bay. Rangers Brandon Moore from the Flamingo District and Dan Kiger from the Florida Bay District responded to Nine Mile Bank and found a Robinson R-44 helicopter floating upside down in approximately two feet of water. The ship was reported missing on Saturday after taking off from Tamiami Airport. All four people onboard were found uninjured. They’d spent the night in the bay and were rescued by a Miami Dade Air Rescue helicopter. Due to high winds and sea conditions moving into the area, rangers anchored the helicopter in place and will coordinate recovery efforts after the storm passes. NTSB is investigating the cause of the crash.

 

Blue Ridge Parkway

On Thursday, September 4th, Kenneth Tarzwell of Fairview, North Carolina, appeared before a federal judge and was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $12,000 in restitution following his guilty plea in an arson case from last year (click on the link below for the original report). On June 5, 2007, Tarzwell travelled to the Pisgah Inn, where he contacted his ex-girlfriend, an employee living in the inn’s dormitory. The girlfriend told him to leave, which he did – but he returned after a few minutes, broke out the window to her room, poured gasoline into the room, pitched in the can and ignited the gas. The girlfriend and three others in the room at the time were able to extinguish the flames without anyone getting hurt. Tarzwell fled the scene and was arrested three days later when he was found at a local mental hospital.  Initially, Tarzwell claimed he had nothing to do with the incident and was not there, but later recanted and confessed. Tarzwell pled guilty to arson, willful destruction of property, and breaking and entering.  The investigation was conducted by parkway rangers, NPS special agent Kirby Styles and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. It was prosecuted through the U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of North Carolina.


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Bryce Canyon National Park

During the week of August 24th, rangers assisted officers from the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, Utah Department of Public Safety’s SWAT, the Forest Service and several other local and state agencies with a marijuana garden eradication operation north of Panguitch, Utah, in Dixie National Forest. Rangers Mark Hnat and Bryan Adams from Bryce Canyon, along with ranger Grant Stolhand and field trainee Mark Cutler, worked alongside Utah DPS SWAT team members posing as hunters in order to monitor traffic in the area and performed reconnaissance  patrols in order to locate a marijuana growing site. On August 29th, rangers Mike Zirwas (CARE), Jeff Kracht (GLCA), and Scott Larson (GLCA) joined Hnat and Adams in assisting the joint agency team assembled to raid the garden.  Approximately 1500 plants, almost two miles of irrigation piping, and associated equipment and supplies were removed from the area. This raid was one of seven raids in three days in southern Utah. Several arrests have been made in conjunction with these operations. 

 

Mojave National Preserve

A 21-year-old Marine from Twenty-nine Palms died in a single-vehicle crash while traveling east on Morningstar Mine Road on the evening of September 7th. The driver, Jason Verta, was found dead in his car by a passerby who saw Verta’s 2006 Pontiac Solstice lying in a ditch off the road. Captain Nic Tuntland drove a park engine to the scene and determined that Verta had died of his injuries prior to his arrival. The California Highway Patrol investigated. According to their report, Verta was heading east on Morning Star Mine Road when his car left the road as he went around a curve. As he attempted to get back on the road, the car skidded and began to roll across the roadway and into the open desert on the north side of the road.

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The White House

President Bush has directed that all flags be flown at half staff on September 11th – Patriot Day – from sunrise until sunset. An excerpt from his proclamation appears below; the full text can be read by clicking on “More Information” below.

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By a joint resolution approved December 18, 2001 (Public Law 107-89), the Congress has designated September 11 of each year as "Patriot Day."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2008, as Patriot Day. I call upon the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as well as appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half-staff on Patriot Day. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe Patriot Day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and remembrance services, to display the flag at half-staff from their homes on that day, and to observe a moment of silence beginning at 8:46 a.m. eastern daylight time to honor the innocent Americans and people from around the world who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.



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NPS Alumni

Long-time National Park Service employee James H. ‘Jim’ Charleton passed away, Tuesday, August 26th, at DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. 

Jim retired from the National Park Service in 2003 after more than 30 years with the Service in a variety of positions and offices, most recently serving with the Office of International Affairs (OIA) as World Heritage program officer. He returned to Norfolk after retirement, but continued as an advisor on World Heritage matters to the National Park Service in Washington. During his career with the Service, Jim edited publications, coordinated National Historic Landmark theme studies, developed many National Historic Landmark nominations, as well as several World Heritage nominations.  Under the guidance of Dr. Ernest Connally in 1981, he developed the first U.S. World Heritage Tentative List of Future Nominations, and, coming full circle, during his retirement worked with OIA to complete the second Tentative List issued in 2008. He was active for many years in the politics of Arlington, Virginia, where he resided for 30 years and where he acquired the reputation of a gadfly. He served on both Arlington’s Planning Board and its Landmarks Board.

Born on United Nations Day, October 24, 1946, Jim grew up in Noble County, Ohio, which he frequently described as the poorest county in the state. It is part of Appalachia except to those people who refuse to acknowledge that Appalachia extends into Ohio.

According to a tale that he liked to recount, he was faced with a professional crossroads upon his college graduation – accept a temporary position with the National Park Service in Washington, DC, or take up exciting staff work for a Congressman from New Jersey. Jim wisely choose the Park Service – the Congressman was later sentenced to time in a federal penitentiary on tax evasion charges.

During the Vietnam War, he served in the U.S. Navy as an English teacher to Vietnamese officers. He was fluent in a number of languages – Cambodian, Russian, Thai and Vietnamese being among those that he was comfortably conversant in. Jim was proud of the time he served in the Navy and pleased that it belonged in his past, not his present, although he enjoyed an experience not unlike the characters of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, a tome which he later in life foisted on unsuspecting coworkers as an instructional guide in international relations. 

A historian with a great sense of humor, Jim was co-author of a number of historical books, including Signers of the Constitution and The Presidents, published as part of his work with the History Division of the National Park Service.  His study of sites related to the American presidency is considered the most comprehensive work on the subject.  He worked in the Park History Program NHL Survey under Ed Bearss from 1982 until 1995, when he transferred to OIA.

A noted aficionado of national anthems and other esoteric nursery rhymes, Jim especially loved the incongruity of the two-tune medley regularly offered by a street trumpeter (who still works the same corner) at the intersection of 18th and H Streets in downtown Washington, DC, which begins with the "Communist Internationale" and segues into "When the Saints Go Marching In." He always felt the composer of either tune would be offended to have his work associated with the other. The thought delighted him.

While laboring in the History Division, Jim began to acquire his fearsome reputation for assembling and stacking huge piles of boxes and files clear to the ceiling, concocting a Rube Goldfarbian shelving system that amazed (and sometimes frightened) anyone with the temerity to venture into his work space. Colleagues would not allow Patty Henry, a pregnant coworker, to enter his office for fear it would collapse on her, and were quite insistent that Jim discuss landmark nominations in her office or the hallway.  When not inducing heart palpitations in his timid colleagues, Jim served as an interviewer for the National Historic Preservation Oral Histories Program. These he promptly added to his towering mounds of files, furthering fortifying his bureaucratic domain.

Jim was one of the few preservation historians to actually rub elbows, shake hands or receive calls from national leaders.  Working late one evening, he once got a phone call from former President Reagan expressing his support for a potential National Historic Landmark located on property bordering the Reagan ranch.  Later, accompanying a group of officials from Massachusetts on a trip to Cambodia, he was granted an audience with that nation’s leader, coming away from the experience saying that ‘he had the softest hands of any mass murderer I’ve ever met.’

Joining the staff of the WASO Office of International Affairs in the mid-1990’s, Jim enjoyed the humorous aspects of working with the public on World Heritage matters.  There was the private citizen who flooded Jim with petitions to have the United States nominate the moon as a World Heritage Site, under the natural site criteria, naturally.  Citing the same arguments against inscription of Antarctica, Jim patiently informed the petitioner that all sites under consideration for nomination must have a management plan and be under the legal jurisdiction of a specific country.  The moon, festooned as it is with American flags, remains still the property of, and managed by, exactly nobody.

Jim also had to respond frequently to people who believed or feared that the World Heritage Convention was part of a nefarious plot by the United Nations to “take over” America’s national parks.  While this might have led others to exasperation, Jim always treated these inquiries (and occasional invectives) with the utmost professionalism and courtesy. 

As OIA’s World Heritage Program Officer, Jim was a key member of many US delegations to annual sessions of the World Heritage Committee held in various far flung locations all over the globe.  Only three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Jim was the sole U.S. representative to the General Assembly of State Parties at UNESCO in Paris, where he received expressions of sympathy and concern from delegates from around the world.

With nearly three decades experience in World Heritage matters, Jim’s expertise in the field was unsurpassed by anyone in the U.S.  His colleagues frequently referred to Jim (to his dismay) as the U.S.’s World Heritage “guru.”  His knowledge of U.S. history and the NPS was equally impressive. Jim took a particular interest in providing guidance to younger staff and OIA interns.  He truly cared about people, and though never wanting to bring attention to himself, Jim went out of his way to provide others with opportunities for professional growth and development. Jim made sure that more junior staff members were allowed to take the lead in meeting with international VIPs and gave them substantive roles in important research and other international projects. 

Jim was also an inveterate story teller, someone who had an anecdote for just about every occasion and topic.  Those who worked for Jim for any length of time heard many of these stories over and over again, but never tired of listening to Jim’s delivery. 

Despite the diplomatic circles which his job often required him to move in, haberdashery was never one of Jim’s strong suits.  In fact, he didn’t own a suit, at least not that any co-worker could attest to.  Jim believed in sustainability, frugally wearing out shoes and shirts beyond what other mere mortals could endure.  A cigarette burn was no grounds for dismissal of a threadbare shirt.  You could say that Jim was a child of the Beat Generation.  He beat his clothes into the ground.

Jim never failed to provide opportunities for the younger staff to hone their skills under his tutelage.  Once an international visitor asked him what the dollar value of Yellowstone was.  This question gave a young staffer his first real international opportunity to serve as an ambassador of the Park Service, simply because Jim wouldn’t stop laughing. 

He is survived by his father, CDR Basil Charleton, USN (Ret.) and his special friend, Emily; his two sisters Faye and Elizabeth; and an extended family of Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrant friends, including Ai-Lien, the Sathyna and Phalamede Ell families, and his foster son Remy Kim, all of Arlington-Falls Church, VA, and the Patrick Nguyen Smith family of Yorktown. He also leaves behind a squadron of dear friends within the various offices of the NPS with whom he worked.  As both a colleague and a friend, Jim will be greatly missed by fellow NPS staff and by all who came to know him.  He was truly one of a kind.

A memorial service was held on August 31st in Norfolk, VA with Emily Kircheval officiating. In lieu of flowers, gifts in his memory may be made to support the overseas clinics operated by Operation Smile - http://www.operationsmile.org/

An informal memorial lunch will be arranged for NPS-WASO staff in Washington, DC sometime in the next few weeks to share memories of our departed friend.  Details to follow.

 

Denver Service Center

Bob Steinholtz, retired NPS landscape architect and a certifiable “legend in the trails community,” passed away on August 18, 2008. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1954 with a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, Bob worked for Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and later started a private landscape architecture practice. In 1969, Bob started working for the National Park Service at the Denver Service Center. His first assignment was to develop trails for Guadalupe National Park. He designed a stock trail to the summit of 8,750' Guadalupe Peak, the highest peak in Texas.

Bob was a gifted designer and was particularly adept at creating solid, biddable design documents. As a landscape architect, he was a project leader who was instrumental in directing the development of numerous trail and campground projects throughout the NPS including Big Bend NP, Sequoia NP, Isle Royale NP and Rocky Mountain NP.

Bob was also a great resource and mentor to many aspiring trail designers in the public and private sector. While at the National Park Service, he encouraged landscape architects to pursue opportunities to obtain field experience in construction. In the 1980s, he developed and taught training courses for trail building. Bob often traveled to parks and spent considerable time in the backcountry working on trail construction and giving hands-on training in trail building techniques to many young professionals.

After retiring from the National Park Service in 1996, Bob started Bristlecone Trails, a trail consulting office. Bob continued to provide trail planning and design expertise in 24 states, involving terrain from deserts to wetlands to mountains, and most vegetation types. In 2001, the US Forest Service printed a manual on wetland trails for which Bob was the principal author. He also continued teaching trail building and personally sponsored courses in the mountains of Colorado and New York. In 2003, the Professional Trailbuilders Association (formerly the Western Trailbuilders Association) presented the prestigious Harvey Bell Memorial Award to Bob for his long career in advancing trail design on all fronts and especially in rustic yet sustainable bridges and wet area crossings. 

Bob really loved the parks and clearly understood the importance of the visitor experience and resource protection, which he applied to his work on a daily basis. His vision for the NPS was to provide access to the parks in a way that would allow visitors to experience the diversity of the landscape as well as time to learn from the surroundings. Park visitors who hike trails designed by Bob Steinholtz experience a special gift that lives on for future generations. He leaves a legacy that few will equal.

Bob is survived by Jan, his wife of 49 years, daughters Patti and Linda, son John, and two grandchildren, Hannah and Cameron.

Donations in Bob’s name may be made to American Trails. These donations will be used for scholarships to conferences and training events.  If you would like to donate, please send your check to American Trails, Attention: Pam Gluck, P.O. Box 491797, Redding CA 96049-1797.

 

 

Virgin Islands National Park

The park is seeking a chief for its division of resource and visitor protection. The announcement is open until Friday, September 19th. For a copy of the announcement, including a full position description and application instructions, click on “More Information” below. For more information on the position and the islands, contact superintendent Mark Hardgrove at 340-776-6201 x242.



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