Last updated: March 1, 2022
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Georgia A. Ellard
Georgia B. Andrews was born in 1929. She was raised with four siblings in an industrial area in Pennsylvania. She attended public schools, graduating in 1947. In a 2015 oral history interview she recalled, “There was not much emphasis given to girls or much incentive given to girls to do anything beyond high school. The boys were encouraged. The girls were not encouraged. You were encouraged to be sweet and kind and loving and beautiful, so that you would capture a young man and you would be taken care of. That was the attitude back in the forties.”
She married Arnett Chester Ellard in 1949. Although she was 19 years old at the time, her mother signed a consent form to approve the marriage. They moved to Washington, DC, in 1952 when housing, restaurants, theaters, and most other aspects of life were segregated. Together they had three daughters.
Ellard began her career with the National Park Service (NPS) in November 1955 at Fort Dupont Park as a clerk-typist. When she began, she had “never heard of the Park Service” and “equated it very much to Parks and Recreation [departments] at the time.” She recalled, “As a clerical employee, you didn’t wear a uniform. And the number of women working in the Park Service at that time was very minimal. It was a good-ol’-boy organization. Most of the women who worked were at the lower [pay] grades. There were very few managerial positions available to women. It didn’t matter whether they were white or black; women just were not seen in the Park Service so much at that time.”
From 1955 until around 1971 Ellard worked a variety of clerical and secretarial positions in the National Capital Parks, the Eastern Office of Design and Construction, and the Washington Service Center. Ellard also supervised clerical support staff and the vocational office trainee program early in her career. With the support of supervisors like Harvey Reynolds, she participated in training opportunities that enabled her to advance her career. She recalled, “The organization recognized my experience and my talent each step of the way, and when it was time for promotion, I was given a promotion.”
She worked her way into a personnel clerk position, screening prospective NPS employees. She recalled that in the early 1960s the “National Capital Region Personnel Office in the Main Interior [building] decided that they needed to have some color in their office. No one actually said that to me, but as I looked at the complexion of the office personnel, they were not integrated. I worked on the first floor as a personnel clerk. I sat right by the door. I was visible. I was the first Black that you would see if you came into the Personnel Office. The whole corridor, except for the mailroom, was all white, but then when I got there, I was the first person, Black person, that sat in a primary office.”
Asked if she felt her presence in the office made an impact on hiring, she responded, “No, I don’t think so, because people who applied to work for the Park Service were career naturalists and historians and Park Service people. They were oriented that way, so many of the Black population were not oriented to these careers, and I don’t think we got many applications from Black applicants for those kinds of positions. We did get applications for the maintenance workers or for those types of positions, but as it related to the professional fields we didn’t get many Black applicants. But it did make a difference to the people who worked in the mailroom who saw a Black person sitting in the Personnel Office. It was like, ‘Wow, we have someone here who isn’t in a service position.’ They didn’t see any other Black faces in the Personnel Office or in any of those offices."
For a period of about seven months in 1971 Ellard worked as a personnel management specialist at the Washington Service Center. In December that year, she became employee development specialist for the National Capital Parks, a position she held for about nine months. In August 1972 she was hired as the GS-9 administrative officer for National Capital Parks Professional Support Office. She was their first woman administrative officer.
She became the first woman administrative officer in the National Capital Region when she worked began working for the National Visitor Center in Washington, DC, in February 1974. Created in Union Station as a high-profile Bicentennial project, the National Visitor Center never achieved its promise and was largely seen as a $100 million failure. She was promoted to its general manager in November 1978, just one month before its main interpretive experience was cancelled and amid major Congressional budget cuts. It was closed in 1981 and formally abolished on December 29, 1981.
In May 1981 Ellard was named assistant superintendent of Rock Creek Park, the country’s first and largest natural urban park. She became acting superintendent in early 1983 and then superintendent later that year. This appointment made her the first woman superintendent of Rock Creek Park and its first African American woman superintendent. She was the third Black woman superintendent in the NPS, after Geraldine M. Bell (1979) and Martha Aikens (1980).
In a 1985 oral history interview, Ellard noted that some men treated her differently as a woman superintendent. She said, “I’ve had [male coworkers] who, instead of shaking my hand, kind of put their arm around my shoulder. And I respond by saying to them, 'Would you do this if I were a male superintendent?'”
Ellard retired from the NPS in January 1988, after 33 years with the bureau. Over the course of her career, she steadily worked her way up from her initial GS-3 clerk-typist position to a GS-13 superintendent. Ellard was formally recognized for her work at various points during her career. She received special achievement awards in 1963, 1974, and 1987. In 1988 she received the Department of the Interior’s Meritorious Service Award, the highest honorary recognition.
In retirement, Ellard says she didn’t find shopping fulfilling and soon began working as a receptionist at B’nai B’rith Homecrest House in Silver Spring, Maryland. It wasn’t long before she was promoted to manager of their 43-unit assisted living facility. After four years, she became the tenant liaison for a subsidized apartment complex, a position she held for over 18 years.
Sources:
Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Marriages, 1852-1968 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
Georgia A. Ellard interview by Polly Kaufman. (1985, March 27). Polly Kaufman Collection. NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry Center.
Georgia A. Ellard interview by Lu Ann Jones. (2015, January 16). NPS Oral History Collection (HFCA 1817). NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry Center.
Janiskee, Bob (2011). Pruning the Parks: The $100 Million National Visitor Center Fiasco. National Parks Traveler.
National Park Service. (1983, December). Ellard Moves Up at Rock Creek. Courier: The National Park Service Newsletter, 28 (12), pp 9.
National Park Service. (1988, September). National Capital Alumni. Courier: The Newsmagazine of the National Park Service, 33 (9), pp 46.
Spiewak, R. (1980, May). National Visitor Center ‘Alive and Well’. Courier: The National Park Service Newsletter, 3 (6), pp.3-4.
“The woman who broke barriers in Rock Creek Park leadership, and other park history panels” (2021, July 21). Forest Hills Connection. December 30, 2021, from https://www.foresthillsconnection.com/news/on-tuesday-july-27-hear-from-the-woman-who-broke-barriers-in-rock-creek-park-leadership.
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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.