Audrey Calhoun

Audrey Calhoun's mother was a teacher and had a profound influence shaping her daughter's life. It was she who insisted that Calhoun get a college education.

Audrey Calhoun, 1981. (NPS History Collection photo)

Shortly before graduating from Grambling College in 1971 with a BA in biology, Calhoun had a chance meeting with National Park Service (NPS) employees at a career day event. A minority recruitment program helped her get a summer job as a park guide at Yellowstone National Park. In a March 1973 interview in The Times of Shreveport, Louisiana, Calhoun noted that it was her gender rather than her race that got her attention at the park. She said, “Everyone at Yellowstone had to get used to my being a woman ranger. It was a totally new experience for them as well as for me. Even the visitors kept asking how a girl got to be a ranger.” She enrolled at Louisiana Technical University in fall 1971 but returned to Yellowstone for two more summers.

Calhoun earned a BS in recreational forestry, becoming the first woman to graduate from the university’s School of Forestry. She was also the first Black woman in the United States to get a forestry degree.

Introduction to NPS operations class photo, spring 1974. Audrey Calhoun is standing in the second row, fourth from the left. (NPS Horace M. Albright Training Center photo)

After her 1973 season at Yellowstone, Calhoun was offered a temporary park technician position at George Washington Memorial Parkway, where she conducted living history demonstrations in period clothing at Arlington House. In February 1974, while working for the NPS Division of Training, she attended introduction to NPS operations, the ranger training course at Albright Training Center at Grand Canyon National Park. After completing it, she was assigned as a ranger on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Her duties included interpretation, law enforcement, and campground operations. She attended the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, in a class that was mostly men.

Audrey Calhoun at the Summer of Change event at Glen Echo Park, 1985. (Photo © Bruce Guthrie)

In 1976 she became a park naturalist at Prince William Forest Park. She held that position for four years. In 1981 she was promoted to park manager for Glen Echo Park. In an interview for the Courier, Calhoun expressed her love for the NPS stating, “I’m in it for the duration.” By 1988 she was park manager of President’s Park.

She was promoted to superintendent of George Washington Memorial Parkway on September 14, 1994. With Martha Aikens at Independence National Historical Park and Diane Dayson at Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site, she was one of the three African American women superintendents in 1995 (one percent of 276 parks that had superintendent positions). Over the next decade, she went on to save 12 of the 24 acres of Arlington House woodlands from an expansion of Arlington National Cemetery, moved the Arlington House staff from offices in historic structures to a new facility, and opened the slave quarters to the public, among other accomplishments. During the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks Calhoun set up a staging area for rangers arriving from other parks to assist with the response. In a 2005 interview she identified the creation of a partnership at Glen Echo Park that allowed NPS staff to focus on telling the Glen Echo story, including that of its racially charged past, as her greatest accomplishment.

Calhoun was true to her word and stayed with the NPS for the long haul. When she retired on October 29, 2005, she had given more than 34 years of service to national parks.

Sources:

Aswell, Thomas. (1973, March 23). “Tech Coed to Become First Woman Ranger.” The Times (Shreveport, Louisiana).

Kaufman, Polly Welts. 2006. National Parks and the Woman’s Voice: A History. University of New Mexico Press.

Lee, Bill. (1973, March 23). “Black Coed to Receive Forestry Degree.” The Shreveport Journal.

National Park Service. (1981, June). “Calhoun: ‘In It For the Duration.’” Courier, volume 4, Number 6.

National Park Service. (2005, October). “From the Office Down the Hall.” The Spectacle, Volunteers Monthly Newsletter of Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial, Volume VI, Number 10.

Robinson & Associates, Inc. (2011). George Washington Memorial Parkway Administrative History, 1985-2010.

Explore More!

To learn more about Women and the NPS Uniform, visit Dressing the Part: A Portfolio of Women's History in the NPS.


This research was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.