Joan Sanders Oral History Interview

Joan Sanders

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH JOAN SANDERS

AUGUST 28, 1990
INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

INTERVIEWED BY JIM WILLIAMS
ORAL HISTORY #1990-5
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #4129-4134

HARRY S TRUMAN NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

EDITORIAL NOTICE

This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for Harry S Truman National Historic Site. After a draft of this transcript was made, the park provided a copy to the interviewee and requested that he or she return the transcript with any corrections or modifications that he or she wished to be included in the final transcript. The interviewer, or in some cases another qualified staff member, also reviewed the draft and compared it to the tape recordings. The corrections and other changes suggested by the interviewee and interviewer have been incorporated into this final transcript. The transcript follows as closely as possible the recorded interview, including the usual starts, stops, and other rough spots in typical conversation. The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written, word. Stylistic matters, such as punctuation and capitalization, follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition. The transcript includes bracketed notices at the end of one tape and the beginning of the next so that, if desired, the reader can find a section of tape more easily by using this transcript.
Joan Sanders and Darla Hostetler reviewed the draft of this transcript. Their corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Darla Hostetler in December 2016.

RESTRICTION

Researchers may read, quote from, cite, and photocopy this transcript without permission for purposes of research only. Publication is prohibited, however, without permission from the Superintendent, Harry S Truman National Historic Site.

ABSTRACT

Joan Sanders (b. Oct 19, 1938 – d. Jan. 19, 2012) was the first administrative technician for the newly formed Harry S Truman National Historic Site and was involved in setting up the park operation. In her interview she discusses what it was like being involved in establishing basic operating and administrative procedures, getting staff positions filled, and time spent planning and executing the dedication day of the park, and the loss of the first planned headquarters building due to a fire just weeks before the site was due to open.

Persons mentioned: Pam Eckerman, Norman Reigle, Tom Richter, Bess W. Truman, James Watt, Ike Skelton, Sue Kopcynski, Lisa Bosso, Linda Joseph, Jenny Hayes, Gregory Payne “Skip” Brooks, Palma Wilson Buell, Rick Jones, Cindy Ott, Ben Zobrist, Mary Jo Colley, John Kawamoto, Liz Safly, Vicki Alexander, Pat Kerr Dorsey, Doris Masek, Donna Clark, Warren Ogle, Ron Cockrell, Andy Ketterson, Michael Lee, Al O’Bright, Jill York O’Bright, Lee Jamison, Margaret Truman Daniel, Doris Kinney, Jimmy Dunning, Charles Odegaard, Steve Harrison, Carol Reigle, Charlie Wieser, Dave Herrera, Clayton Conner, Mike Healy, Karen Tinnin, Jody Adkins, John Whitfield, Chrissy Barker, and Gene Warren.

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH JOAN SANDERS

HSTR INTERVIEW #1990-5

JIM WILLIAMS: This is an interview with Joan Sanders. We're in the chief ranger's office in the headquarters of Harry S Truman National Historic site on the morning of August 28th, 1990. The interviewer is Jim Williams, a park ranger at Harry S Truman. Also present is Michael Shaver, who is the museum aide at Harry S Truman. Joan, can you describe your experience with the National Park Service before you came to Harry S Truman.
JOAN SANDERS: I was administrative assistant at Lincoln Home National Historic Site for six years and two months prior to coming to Truman.
WILLIAMS: Was that your first Park Service assignment?
SANDERS: Yes. I started out there as a GS-4 administrative clerk, and when I left I was a GS-7 administrative assistant.
WILLIAMS: Did you have any government experience before that?
SANDERS: Just military. I was in the Marine Corps.
WILLIAMS: How did you get the position here at Harry S Truman?
SANDERS: Am I supposed to be candid?
WILLIAMS: Please.
SANDERS: Okay. In January of '83, in the Midwest region staff minutes, there was a notice that Ranger in Charge was being assigned to Harry S Truman. After reading that, I called the personnel office and talked to our
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generalist, who was Pam Eckerman. I said, "I saw where they're filling a position at Truman. Do you know when they'll be filling the rest of the staff?" She said, "No. It's going to be several months from now. We're just putting a body over there to have Park Service presence." I said, "Well, I sure would like to see a vacancy announcement when they advertise the administrative position," and didn't think any more about it.
On October 28th of the same year, Pam called me, and she said, "Joan, were you the one that was wanting me to send you a vacancy announcement for Harry Truman when it got to filling that position?" I said, "I certainly was." She says, "Well, I tell you what. We've got the vacancy announcement ready to issue. It's going out at a seven. If you are interested in the position, we will not issue the vacancy announcement." I used a few words. I was so excited. I said, "Pam, let me think about this overnight. I will call you at eight o'clock in the morning." At eight o'clock in the morning, I called her back, and I said, "Yes. I would definitely be interested in going." She said, "Okay. We're going to pass this information on to the new superintendent, Norm Reigle, he's in the office this week." That was on a Wednesday, and on Friday I had a job offer from Norm Reigle.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Norm before this?
SANDERS: No, not at all. I'd never even heard his name before.
WILLIAMS: Why were you excited about leaving the Lincoln Home and coming here, if it was not really a promotion?
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SANDERS: The challenge, the incredible experience of starting a new park from scratch, to me, was the ultimate job opportunity, because how many times in my lifetime would I get that opportunity?
WILLIAMS: Did you know Tom Richter before you came here?
SANDERS: I had met Tom in September of '83. He'd been over to Lincoln Home. He'd already been here, and he'd been over to Lincoln Home to study our interpretive services over there, our interpretation program and how we dealt with the visitors, because we had a historic house, not similar to Truman, but there were some similarities to the two sites, as far as them being historic homes, working out traffic flow patterns, determining which type of interpretation you were going to do, if you were going to do a walk-through type, if you were going to do a fixed station, or something like that. He was over in September, and I met him then, not having any idea that two months later I'd be working with him. That was the furthest thing from my mind.
WILLIAMS: Then you were the third permanent staff member here?
SANDERS: Yes.
WILLIAMS: To your knowledge, what had happened in the park before you arrived?
SANDERS: Oh, there was a lot of activity from . . . Park Service involvement goes back a number of years, a good number of years, to prior to the designation of the historic landmark district. If my recollection serves me correctly, that goes back as far as the late sixties when Park Service had some contact with the Truman Library and other folks in the area
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regarding this. Things really got heated up after Mrs. Truman's death in August of '82 because then there was . . . how do I want to say it? There were difficulties with the Park Service actually getting the home. The will indicated that it was being willed to the people of the United States. I believe Mrs. Truman, in her mind, thought that meant the Truman Library, not knowing that the Truman Library was not geared to operate or protect, preserve, or provide quality visitor services for a historic home.
I know there was an interim of six weeks from the time Mrs. Truman died until Mr. James Watt finally accepted the house. There was a lot of political pressure brought to bear on him by the local congressmen and the local senators. I read accounts of that, because Ike Skelton, for one, was just practically beside himself at the thought that Mr. Watt didn't want to willingly accept this treasure. There's a date in December . . . December 8th sticks out in my mind, but I don't know if that's accurate or not. I know at that point, from the time she passed away until we accepted it, GSA had their Federal Protective Service in the house twenty-four hours a day because the Secret Service coverage was discontinued upon her death. I remember that right after I got here, I had to deal with a bill paying for that six weeks of round-the-clock service that was going to be billed to the National Park Service after the fact.
We continued having the FPS service in the house on a twenty-four hour basis until we went operational on May 15th. At that point in time, the rangers were on duty from . . . That particular year was the only
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year we had evening tours, and I believe our hours down at the home were from eight in the morning till seven in the evening. Then at that point in time FPS came back on. I can't remember at what point in time FPS then started contracting out the guard service, and then we got their guards. After we had at least a year or more with their guards, then we made the move to reintensify the effort to put the security system in, because some of the things that happened with those guards were incredible.
WILLIAMS: After Mrs. Truman's death, how much news spread to Springfield, where you were, about the Truman home and the possibility of the Park Service taking control of it?
SANDERS: None. None that I recall. I mean, we knew . . . It was on the news that she had passed away, and that was it.
WILLIAMS: It wasn't a topic of conversation.
SANDERS: Oh, no, not even within the park. It was a non-issue. Nobody was interested. My ears perked up when I saw the Ranger in Charge being assigned to it.
WILLIAMS: When you arrived, did you have a lot of administrative details to take care of that had built up?
SANDERS: [chuckling] Well, I tell you what. I ransacked Lincoln Home for one thing before I left. I brought over three cases of supplies and forms. I went through our total form supply over at Lincoln Home, and I extracted three to four copies of everything I thought we would be needing within a reasonable amount of time at Truman, for whatever situation came up.
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For that reason it was really neat that they were both historic sites and historic homes, and they were going to have a lot of the same type of paper flow. I moved them in my truck so I would have access to them upon arrival, the supplies as well as the forms and stuff. I also transferred some furniture legally [chuckling] on a transfer of property. They had some surplus bookcases and stuff, and I did a transfer of property at Lincoln Home before I left there, but that stuff all was moved on the moving van with my personal furniture, because we didn't have a place to put it even when I got here because we didn't have any headquarters or anything.
WILLIAMS: Who was taking care of the administrative work before you arrived?
SANDERS: Tom Richter. He's very good.
WILLIAMS: Through Jefferson?
SANDERS: Right. There were hardly any bills to deal with at that time, maybe utility bills and maybe things like that. Anything that would come in, he would just send over to the Arch and they would process it for payment. He had a sub-fund from their imprest fund where he had access to petty cash for small things as he needed them. Then he would send them back over to Jeff for replenishment vouchers. That's how it operated until I got here.
WILLIAMS: When you arrived, what did it seem like Norm Reigle's priorities were in the early months?
SANDERS: [laughter] The home would . . . As far as he was concerned, the dedication date of May 12th was set in stone and nothing was going to
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delay it in any way, shape, or form. And we were committed to that, regardless of what happened in the interim.
WILLIAMS: So it was a horserace.
SANDERS: You better believe it. And we won. [chuckling] Yeah, we won.
WILLIAMS: And your EOD date here was?
SANDERS: November 27th, 1983. I actually didn't arrive until December 1st because there was a delay with GSA moving my household goods.
WILLIAMS: Then what other staff arrived after you?
SANDERS: Okay. A young lady named Sue Kopcynski came on. She was detailed as a curator from Morristown National Park in New Jersey. She came on within a few days of when I got here. She was over here until close to the end of February, when she went back to New Jersey. Her basic work task was getting an inventory of the stuff in the house, which at that time the ballpark estimate was ten thousand. And that turned out to be grossly underestimated.
Okay. Let's see. Sue came on, and then Steve Harrison came February 19th of '84. He was the permanent curator. He came over from the Arch in St. Louis. It was a lateral reassignment for him. Within a week after he came, then Sue went back to New Jersey. Then a temporary museum aide position was filled with Lisa Bosso. Then we filled a seasonal park ranger with Linda Joseph, who had no Park Service prior experience, but she was an airline stewardess, and her personality seemed to go well with what we were endeavoring to do here. Then Jenny Hayes,
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our secretary, came on April 1. The rest of the permanent staff came on April 15th, which included Gregory Payne Brooks, better known as Skip, as our facility management specialist at the GS-7 level. And we brought Palma Wilson Buell up from Ozark as our lead park technician at that time at the GS-6 level. I'll check my notes on the rest of them. Oh, yeah, Rick Jones and Cindy Ott came in from Lava Beds as permanent GS-5 park rangers. Rick's was a promotion because he had formerly been the GS-4 admin clerk out there, and Cindy was a lateral reassignment. They were a couple out there, and then they tied the knot after they got here. So it was a deliberate effort to bring the two of them together.
WILLIAMS: Where did Skip come from?
SANDERS: He came from Richmond Battlefield. He was the. . . with the exception of Jenny, the secretary, he was the only permanent position that was not known to anybody on the staff when he was hired. Everybody knew somebody else that was coming in. I mean, they weren't a complete stranger. But nobody knew Skip.
WILLIAMS: Was his a promotion?
SANDERS: No. His was a downgrade, in fact, because he was a wage grade employee, and coming into the GS series, he took a penny cut an hour in salary. So it was considered a downgrade. Because I thought that was a weird personnel action.
WILLIAMS: It seems remarkable to me that very few of the original staff came here as a promotion. They were all lateral from someplace.
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SANDERS: I think they all felt the same way I did. How many chances in your lifetime do you get to start a new park? Because you know if it goes well, there's going to be a promotion down the line for you out of here. Some just have to wait longer than others. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: Can you describe the first offices of this park?
SANDERS: Okay. A few weeks ago, I wrote up a little thing for some folks that were coming in here for the Denver service center. They were wanting to study the relationship with the Truman Library and the Truman home. I wish I had that in front of me, but I don't. Our relationship with the Truman Library has got to be one of the more unique relationships between federal agencies that has ever existed. When Tom came over in January, Dr. Zobrist graciously provided Tom with a nice office, desk, telephone, file cabinets, use of the copier, unlimited use of the telephone equipment, and Tom also had access to very valuable resources, including their archives as well as their photographic archives.
When Norm came in October 2nd of '83, they got a little typewriter desk, and they moved it in. Tom had acquired a typewriter, so now we had a regular working desk, a typewriter desk, and file cabinet, wastebasket, telephone, et cetera, and they graciously just absorbed us into their operation.
Then when I came in in December, they moved a work table into the room, and by then we were getting pretty crowded, because with one telephone and three different people doing the things they all had to do to
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get what they had to do accomplished, it got a little hairy at times, but we took it in good nature. We took it in good nature. And the library staff, they really got a big kick out of us, because they really considered us a real bunch of livewires. They're more . . . I don't want to use the term fuddy-duddy, but they are just more quiet. They're more conservative-type people. And when Park Service got over there, they knew we were in the building. [laughter]
And then shortly after. . . Before I left Lincoln Home, I started in my mind making lists, and then I started putting them on paper, of just basic things you were going to need to start up an operation, that you were going to have to have to have an operational park. I mean, dealing with office furniture, office equipment, supplies, whatever. After I got over here, then I started ordering that stuff. We started sending the DI-1s to the Equipment Review Board, getting the stuff approved, getting it ordered. Then, of course, that stuff started coming in, and we didn't have anyplace to put it, so the library again offered us use of this big room in their basement where we had a section, and we put everything in there as it came in, from copy papers to copy machines to file cabinets to storage cabinets to what have you. We weren't acquiring new office furniture. We believed in going the thrift method and we were acquiring everything from Excess Property. Most of the stuff, we were arranging for the people that had it to hold it until we got office space, and then we were going to
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make one grand pickup, which was incredible. That's another story. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: Who were the people at the Truman Library that you dealt with?
SANDERS: Mary Jo Colley, unfortunately, God love that girl, her office was adjacent to ours, and when things weren't going well, she knew about it, even if the door was shut. I mean, Norm Reigle would not tolerate incompetence. We did not have time to deal with incompetence. I don't care if that incompetence was on our staff. . . or if it was on the regional staff, he made himself known, and certain people removed from projects from time to time, because we did not have time to deal with that. We had a deadline, and it was going to be done, and it was going to be done well. If it wasn't, if you couldn't do your job well, you were removed. That was it. That was the bottom line. That's one of his terms, "bottom line."
WILLIAMS: Are there any specific instances of that that you remember?
SANDERS: Oh, my. Oh, yes. The one that's most vivid in my mind is the sign for the Truman home.
WILLIAMS: There is no sign for the Truman home.
SANDERS: Oh, yes there is.
MICHAEL SHAVER: There's a beautiful drawing of it in the cabinet over there.
SANDERS: John Kawamoto, who was the ARD up in Omaha at the time we were getting underway. . . . He has since retired, a couple years ago. That man loved Mr. Truman. We had many conversations about him. He used to give me a bad time because he always told me he always liked Mr.
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Truman a lot better than he liked Mr. Lincoln because Mr. Lincoln came home in a box. [chuckling] I dealt with Mr. Kawamoto when I was over at Lincoln Home, as well as dealing with him here. But he was a joy, he was a joy. Truman did not have very many problems in getting the things we needed because we always had the support of John. We always had a good justification for what we wanted to do and why we wanted to do it. It wasn't some pipe dream out of somebody's dream, or whatever.
John Kawamoto really felt that there needed to be a sign, one of these metal signs, at the Truman home indicating that it was a national historic site and that it was National Park Service. Almost every unit in the system has one of these. Norm Reigle was not real fond of the idea. He didn't want anything obtrusive in the yard. There were a lot of drawings sent back and forth and reviewed and disapproved, and what have you. And finally, one drawing was approved, and the regional office was given the go-ahead, yes, go ahead and buy the sign. So because the time was running so short, they couldn't go to Unicor to get the sign because it takes a while to get stuff from Unicor, which is your standard sign maker for the government, so they went to this company up in Omaha to have the sign manufactured. It was supposed to be an aluminum sign in the standard Park Service print, which is, I believe, Clarendon condensed. I might be mistaken on that, but it's Clarendon something: and in the typical brown, et cetera.
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The regional office issued the purchase order. They did all the procurement. They did all the wheeling and dealing with the vendor and everything. Okay. We finally get the notification the sign is on its way. Okay. [laughter] Oh, God. The sign arrives, it's all crated up. It was shipped by some shipping company. They haul it upstairs to the second floor of our fire station here, and I'm tearing into it, uncrating it, and I let out a shriek. You could hear me down to the Truman home, and it's five blocks away. [laughter] Norm Reigle come running out of his office and I cannot repeat what he said.
WILLIAMS: You could try.
SANDERS: No, no, no, no, no.
WILLIAMS: Paraphrase.
SANDERS: That was the most god-awful sign any manufacturer has ever put together. It was in blue like you do trauma signs for hospitals on the interstate highways. They had a period behind the S, which is not in our enabling legislation, there is no period behind the S. The lettering was in silver. It had an aluminum band around the edging of it that was stuck on with some kind of adhesive that wasn't working, and the band had fallen off. It was the sickest piece of craftsmanship I had laid my eyes on in a long time, and we were going to be paying over six hundred dollars for that sucker. Needless to say, the sign coordinator in the regional office got a call from Norm Reigle. Actually, he was not the only one that got a call from Norm Reigle. The sign was shipped back to the regional office, and
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to the best of my recollection, it's buried down in the storeroom in the basement. It was not hung at Truman home.
WILLIAMS: Who were some of the other Truman Library people?
SANDERS: I mentioned Mary Jo. Liz Safly. She got so tickled with us. She's the one that thought we were really a bunch of livewires. She always used to say, "You guys really liven up this library, really liven up this library." And let's see. Vicki Alexander, Pat Kerr – Dorsey now, I believe her married name is. Doris . . . I can't remember her last name. She had a husband that had a medical condition.
WILLIAMS: Doris Masek?
SANDERS: I just can't remember her last name. And there was a young lady named Donna. Was it Donna Clark? And Ruth – I don't know what Ruth's last name was. She's the one that's at the front desk in the administration wing. Then there was a couple of people working back with Vicki. I don't recall their names. I know Tom Richter would. He's going to say the big blonde. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: Did you have much contact with the archivist?
SANDERS: No. Just to see him in the halls, not to talk to him. I talked to Warren Ogle quite a bit. He's now retired. We got to talking one time, and he was the one that was going to take me down into the archives, and we never did it before I retired because my family was real anxious for me to come over here. Ever since I was a small child, my father's family had always claimed a relationship to Mr. Truman through Mr. Truman's
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mother and my great-grandmother. I had mentioned that to Warren one time, and he said, "Oh, gotta take you downstairs and we'll dig through and see what we can find." But we never did do that, so I never find out. Warren was one I talked to more. He'd come in to visit with us.
WILLIAMS: Did you meet Dr. Zobrist?
SANDERS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
WILLIAMS: Describe him.
SANDERS: Professionally or off duty? [laughter]
WILLIAMS: Both. The lines cross.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah. The folks at the library, from my dealings with them over the years, they see an entirely different Dr. Zobrist than I do, some of our staff here.
[End #4129; Begin #4130]
SANDERS: With Dr. Zobrist, I've always seen him as being warm and friendly. I know when we had Tom Richter's going away party, we invited Dr. Zobrist and some of the library staff. They came, and Dr. Zobrist just had the best time. [laughter] He said, "Whenever you guys do this again, be sure and let me know." [laughter] So we've included him from time to time in different things we've done. I know last December when we had our open house for when Norm left, he had as many as wanted to of the library staff rotate in and out of here during the whole afternoon. And he brought over some gag gifts, as well as some nice gifts, for Norm to take with him. He was just so tickled with himself, with some of the stuff he
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brought over. It was so funny. It was so funny. I said, "I wish his staff could see him like that," because they see him in a different light than I see him, or our staff sees him.
WILLIAMS: How significant do you think his contribution was to the early days of the park?
SANDERS: Oh, my. I wouldn't begin to appraise it. There is no way you can appraise it. He wanted the home protected. He wanted the home preserved. But he and his agency wasn't prepared to do it. I thought he was doing everything that he was legally empowered to do to keep that protection as long as he possibly could until the Park Service got here. Because every time one of us would come on board, everybody that EOD'd on this staff prior to April 15th came on board over at the library, and every time he saw a new green and gray uniform show up, he said, "Oh, I'm just so glad you people are here. I feel the cavalry has arrived." I don't know how many times I heard him make that comment. He was so glad we were there and we were going to be taking care of that house.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever get the impression that the Truman Library staff was trying to run the show?
SANDERS: No. I never got that impression. I got the impression that they felt they were the caretakers until somebody better qualified got here to do the job, and when we got here to do the job, assuming we were better qualified, they did nothing but provide support in any manner we needed. I don't care what it was. Any manner we needed, they provided us support.
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WILLIAMS: Was there ever any haggling about paying them rent or for the supplies or reimbursing them?
SANDERS: [laughter] As far as the telephone system was concerned, they had their own FTS trunk line out of the library, so they didn't request we log calls, they didn't request any of that, as far as keeping track of phone calls we made, anything. They kept no track of our use of the copier, and we used it. We had so many projects going—that's another story—and there was always stuff going through the copier. The only time . . . and it was a joke, people, it was a joke. This was well into our operational mode, maybe two or three years ago when the carriage house went under restoration, we approached the library about storing a Truman vehicle there while the carriage house was being stabilized. They of course said yes, and we had it over there for several months. Then we went to get it, and there was some kind of an invoice for twenty thousand dollars that Dr. Zobrist sent over here to Norm Reigle. I wish I could remember the exact response that went back, but it was like lifetime free tours of our cave facility and something else was considered payment, but that was the only effort of any kind, and it was strictly a joke, strictly a joke.
After we started getting our own supplies in over at the library, I would give them cases of copy paper from time to time to try to pay back what we had used, and I did that with typewriter ribbons and stuff. I know one time—I can't remember how the deal was—we ended up with a carton
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of their typewriter ribbons and ended up buying a box for them and sending it back to them. It was a handshake deal, and it worked great.
WILLIAMS: How much were regional office personnel around in the Truman Library when the offices were still over there?
SANDERS: Ron Cockrell was doing a lot of research on the various reports he was writing at that time. He was working on a resource study and a historic structures report, and things of that nature. He was down a lot. It seems to me like I remember Andy Ketterson being down a lot. Because of the projects that were cooking at the time, Michael Lee was down, Lee Jamison was down, Al O’Bright was down, Jill York O’Bright was down. It seemed like we had people staying out at Ho Jo's almost continually from the day I got here until after the dedication.
WILLIAMS: Did all those people try to work out of that one room at the library?
SANDERS: A lot of them would work in . . . I'm thinking from time to time they'd work in that research room with Liz Safly. I think they would be in there. A lot of them would be working on site. Like the people that were doing the projects, they'd be primarily working on site with the electrical contractor or the roofing contractor or the sidewalk contractor, or whoever the devil was on site.
SHAVER: You made mention of Howard Johnson, so obviously, I guess, everybody was there because of the government per diem and travel regulations, but it seemed to reach mythological proportions here.
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SANDERS: Oh, oh, oh. Ho Jo's lounge was one office space we didn't pay rent on. Another office space we didn't pay rent on. I've never documented it. I wish I had at the time, because there was so much planning, there were so many details that were worked out of an evening, after hours, in that lounge at Ho Jo's with the folks from region that were staying there. After we'd get off work at the library, everybody would go out to Ho Jo's to the lounge. We'd be sitting around a table, and we'd be brainstorming, we'd be kicking things around. That is how so many things came about at Truman was a brainstorming session at Ho Jo's. Now they've demolished the building. It just makes me sick! I mean, that was our own historic site, and they've demolished the building. When I came back from Alaska and found that thing demolished, I said, "Independence is telling me it's time to go." So that's when I applied.
SHAVER: It was an omen.
SANDERS: Yes, and I took it literally. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: Would you describe your first visit to the Truman home itself.
SANDERS: I wish I had the letter I wrote to the interpretive staff at Lincoln Home after I'd been in the house the first time. I got calls on that letter from our former rangers after they read it. They said, "Joanie, we never knew you were an interpreter." Because they said after they read that letter, they felt like they had walked through on a tour of the house with me because of the way I described it. I've never had anything emotionally impact me like that house did when I walked in the first time. It was so intense, the
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feeling that they had just gone to the grocery store, and they were going to get back and you'd better get your ass out of there. [chuckling] I mean before they got back. I strongly felt like I was invading their privacy. I've gotten over that, but it's still an incredible feeling. I didn't expect it because you don't get that sense when you walk into the Lincoln Home. But walking into this home, it was so different from . . . just the little knickknacks and stuff that were sitting around that makes it a home, not a prefabricated element, or whatever. It's all real, to the crazy calendar on the kitchen wall with the dates crossed off to the bar of soap that was laying on the sink, the old dishrag that was hanging there, to the clutter in the pantry, just like my mother's. It was just . . . it was an incredible experience. I think almost anybody that went in there had a similar experience.
I know one day in December not long after I'd been here—I'd only been here a week or two—and Life magazine was on site doing a photo essay, I guess is what they call it, that was going to be for the May '84 edition, which was going to be celebrating Mr. Truman's hundredth birthday. Margaret Truman Daniel was on site. Norm asked me if I'd be interested in being in the home with them that day when they were doing the filming and Life was taping her, because they were interviewing her. I said, "Oh, is it possible?" He said, "Of course it's possible." So I was there from nine o'clock in the morning till six o'clock that evening with
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Margaret and the Life reporter and the camera crew, in awe. I don't have a tape of all the stuff that was taped that day, I don't have any tape at all.
That was incredible, truly incredible, because it was colder than . . . it was cold. They would set up the cameras and stuff outside, then they'd come and get Mrs. Daniel and have her get bundled up to go outside for a few shots. Then she'd come back in, get undressed . . . or derobed, and she would come into the kitchen. It almost seems sacrilegious now, but the three of us—the Life reporter, Mrs. Daniel, and myself—were sitting around the kitchen table as it sits now up against the wall, and there were the three of us sitting around the table. The reporter was asking her questions and taping her answers about her life in that house, and I couldn't help but make the comparison of the story she was telling about some of the trouble she caused in her younger days and relating that to my mother and her sister sitting at the table talking about their youth and talking about Mom and Dad this and Mom and Dad that, and Mrs. Daniel saying Mom and Dad this and Mom and Dad that. I'm running the two scenarios in my mind together, and I'm thinking, but this Mom and Dad is the president of the United States, and it just blew me away.
WILLIAMS: Were you the only Park Service person there for that interview?
SANDERS: Norm was in and out.
WILLIAMS: Where was Tom Richter?
SANDERS: He might have been on Christmas leave at that time, because I know he . . . I'm sure he took leave.
22
SHAVER: He didn't mention it in his interview.
SANDERS: I know he wasn't on site at that time.
WILLIAMS: Is that the first time you met Margaret Truman Daniel?
SANDERS: Yes.
WILLIAMS: How would you describe that meeting?
SANDERS: Oh! She's an impressive lady, she's an intimidating lady, and she is a perfect cross between her mother and her father.
WILLIAMS: How do you mean that?
SANDERS: I really can't make that judgment, really. From what I know of her mother and her father, she appears to me to be the perfect cross. She's very straightforward. There is no dancing around the bush, and that impression I got from her dad. He called it like it was. If you didn't like it, you could take a flying leap. That is the distinct impression I got from her. She has a tendency, I do believe, to be a little sharp, which I feel may come from her mother's personality. She's not only straightforward, she's a little sharp, and she's very intimidating. In dealing with her, when she calls on the phone, [laughter] you do not hesitate because she says, "This is Margaret Truman Daniel. Is the superintendent in?" Usually, she'll ask for a name, she'll say, "I'd like to speak with Norman Reigle. This is Margaret Truman Daniel." And you say, "Just one moment, please," and you scurry. I mean, you find the troops and find out where he is so you can tell him, because you don't want her waiting. You just don't want to make that lady wait.
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WILLIAMS: Did you get any impression of her opinion of the Park Service on that first meeting you had with her?
SANDERS: Not the Park Service per se. I got the definite impression that—how do I want to put this?—she would have much preferred if the house had not been open to the public. She was concerned about the public doing permanent damage to her home. This is the home she was born in, this was her home until they moved to Washington, this was the home where she had her roots, and she did not want the public tearing it asunder, and in her mind at that time I think that's what she thought was going to happen. I have been told, I don't have any concrete knowledge of this and I don't know where to go to look for it, but I've been told that she previously had a very negative experience with the Park Service regarding property she and her husband owned on Fire Island, and that experience did not endear her to the fact that the Park Service was going to be operating the home, when I believe she felt like her mother did, that it was going to be the library that was going to have it and not us.
For whatever reasons, for several years she had very limited conversations with Norm Reigle. For a long time she always went through Ben Zobrist. If she had any problems or she had any questions or anything, she always went to Ben, and Ben kind of served as the liaison between the Park Service and Norm per se and Mrs. Daniel. As time wore on, Norm gradually gained her confidence. It by no means happened overnight. This took several years before she got to the point where she
24
would call him direct about anything and he felt comfortable enough in contacting her directly rather than going through Ben. To this day, I advise the new superintendent to . . . how do I want to put this? You don't bother her with every little bitty thing that's going on. You keep her apprised of the major things, but you don't let her know about every little bitty thing that's going on because she's going to give you an opinion one way or the other, and nine times out of ten, you're not going to like it. [laughter]
I mean, if it's something you're wanting to do . . . as a recent example. Eastern National Park and Monument, our cooperating association, came up with this . . . I will be candid and call it a tacky suggestion about reproducing a presidential tie and selling it in their bookstore. I cannot, for other reasons, fathom how a reproduction tie can be considered interpretive materials, which we're restricted to sell in the first place. That's beside the point. In the end, the superintendent wrote Mrs. Daniel about her feelings on having this tie reproduced because other sites were doing it, and he got a little note back saying, and I quote, "I dislike the idea intensely, but you can do as you please." So he opted to not do anything with the tie, and I'm very grateful, because he is new in the position and he needs to gain her confidence. I wish him well in that. I wish him well, because she is an intimidating lady.
WILLIAMS: That day of the Life interview, was that through the whole house?
SANDERS: No. First floor.
25
WILLIAMS: Did you wander through the house with Margaret?
SANDERS: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Or did you just sit back in the kitchen?
SANDERS: They were setting up in different rooms on the first floor. When they'd call for her, then we'd go with her, and they'd keep talking. Her and the reporter would keep talking as they were setting up and everything.
WILLIAMS: So they were taking photographs.
SANDERS: Right. We have a copy of that Life magazine with a lot of photos, with that article and essay in it.
WILLIAMS: And this reporter was Doris Kinney?
SANDERS: Yes. I've been trying to remember her name? It is on there?
WILLIAMS: Yes. Just for the record. Did you have any other face-to-face visits with Mrs. Daniel?
SANDERS: No. I saw her the day of the dedication, but that wasn't . . .
WILLIAMS: So you just had phone contacts, and those were brief.
SANDERS: Right. Minimal and brief.
WILLIAMS: Let's talk about the office space for a while.
SANDERS: Where's the Kleenex? [laughter] Here we go.
WILLIAMS: That seemed to have been one of the priorities, of course.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
WILLIAMS: You're crowding out the Truman Library.
SANDERS: Well, actually, the Truman Library . . . I should back up a bit. As our staff started to increase in March, they found another office for us to use. They
26
weren't adjacent, but we still had another office that we could use. The little airline stewardess that we had hired, Linda Joseph, we put her down there with a typewriter. She was working on lists for the dedication and stuff like that, mailing lists and all kinds of stuff. We put her down there, and there was another work table and stuff down there. So that was another work area, and it also gave us another place to stack boxes. [chuckling]
Right after I got here . . . well, it was underway when I got here, leasing space, permanent office space, through GSA. That was going along on schedule. We had been out and we had looked at proposed sites from GSA, and we had narrowed it down. They had worked out an agreement, or whatever they do, with the Reformed Latter Day Saints Building Corporation here in Independence. They owned an old funeral home that was a block and a half from the Truman home. It was a neat old structure. It was built in 1885, the same year the addition went on the Truman home. It was just perfect for the headquarters for an historic site and an historic home.
I was working with GSA particularly on that project in picking out all the wall coverings, picking out the carpeting, picking out the window treatments, because all of this was covered in the GSA contract, that RLDS had to bring it up to specs, to our specs, or to GSA specs, before we could move in. Everything was targeted with an April 16th move-in date, all the furniture that I had lined up that was stashed in various locations
27
around the country. That included over at the Truman Library in another storage hole they found for us, out at the GSA Property Distribution Center, where they had a bunch of stuff stored for us, and up in Omaha regional office, where they had a basement with a lot of stuff that was tagged for HSTR. Everything was set up for a rental truck to come down from the regional office with the Omaha stuff on it, with one of the regional employees. We were going to hire two day laborers from a temporary employment agency. They were supposed to download that truck. As soon as it was downloaded, they were going to go out to GSA to the property center, pick up that truckload, or truckloads if it wouldn't fit on one truck. Then after the GSA property center was emptied out and downloaded at the headquarters, then we were going to download all the stuff at the Truman Library.
Everything was set to go. The telephone installation, the system, was set to be installed on that day. That was the first day the rest of our permanents were coming on board, and we figured we'd have the extra bodies to help us move everything. But on April Fool's Day, we got sidetracked a tad. RLDS was working on the building. They had discovered a leak in one of the metal roofs. They had one of their church members up on the roof repairing it, doing some work with a blowtorch, and it got away from him and we lost the whole building.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and Norm Reigle called me at home and told me. I was getting to the point where I knew him very well. I was
28
feeling comfortable with him, and I know this is a practical joker I'm dealing with here. I just couldn't believe it when he told me. He was dead serious on the phone, but I couldn't believe it. I was stunned, and I thought, no, it's not true. I looked at the calendar, and I thought, this is April Fool's Day. That clown. So I called him back, and I was giving him a ration because it was April Fool's Day. And he said, "No. We lost the building." And then I came unglued. I thought it was a joke, and then I came unglued.
The next morning, I drove by it and they had it covered with a huge orange tarp. I got to work and thought where do we go from here, because we were stunned. It was Jenny Hayes' first day on duty, and I thought what a way to walk into a brand new job and here you find out your building's burned out from underneath you. [chuckling]
The City of Independence came to our rescue. We had already set up an agreement with them that this old fire station sitting at the corner of Truman Road and Main is where we were going to have our visitor contact. We were going to have a little auditorium set up for an audio-visual program. That had already been established before I got here, and it was in the process of being renovated to fit our needs at that time. I want to say the city planner, but I'm not absolutely sure, Bill Bullard was the gentleman that was involved in it. He called and made the offer to Norm. He said, "Those offices up above where you're going to have the ticket center there are empty. Our credit union just moved out. If you want to
29
come and take a look at them, you might be interested in them for office space."
Norm contacted GSA real estate and told them what the deal was, and they came over. They went with us to look at it, and they said, "Will it meet your needs?" And we said, "We'll make it meet our needs," and within two days we had office space. Everything was ready to go. We had the same trucks lined up, the same temporary employees lined up, the telephone company was all lined up. We just had to give them a different address and tell them where to install the telephone system.
[End #4130; Begin #4131]
WILLIAMS: There were other buildings in the Truman neighborhood considered as office space.
SANDERS: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Besides the funeral home at 815 West Maple.
SANDERS: Right. One of the others was always referred to as the "little Spanish house." I don't know why because it doesn't look Spanish to me. It's kind of sandy-colored stucco or something that was toward the rear of our property but faced Maple Street. It was looked at. I think there was a dentist or some kind of a doctor in there at one time.
WILLIAMS: Did you go on these trips to look at the buildings?
SANDERS: Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't.
WILLIAMS: What was wrong with that building?
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SANDERS: I'm thinking there was a problem with . . . Because when we first started looking, they wanted to lease it to us, and then they turned around and did something different. They more or less withdrew it from . . . My memory could be wrong on this, but I'm thinking they withdrew it, and they were going to use it for something else. They decided to use it for something else. I was not inside that building.
WILLIAMS: Were you inside any other ones?
SANDERS: I'm sure I was, but I don't remember.
SHAVER: We talked about the old William Chrisman . . .?
SANDERS: Oh, yes. Was it the Park College? It was Old Park College?
SHAVER: That had it at that time.
SANDERS: Yes. Sometimes I wondered how GSA's mind worked. I mean, this was unbelievable. This is an old college building. It wasn't used for that anymore. It was used for a variety of purposes. There was no way you could have handicap access in any way, shape, or form into that building. They had this grand scheme of how . . . You have classrooms on the sides, and then you have these wide corridors, and they were going to block them off with partitions so we'd have offices in these corridors. But they wouldn't go up to the ceiling because you didn't need that. You'd have no security whatsoever. I just thought that was totally unacceptable. There was no place for parking, absolutely no place for parking. Yeah, I remember that one. But when we walked into the funeral home, I mean, it
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was in disrepair, but you just took one look at that building and you said, "Oh, the potential."
WILLIAMS: Describe your office space. What was going to be your office?
SANDERS: Okay. It was a three-floor building. The attic, which is the third floor, had an incredible skylight in it. There was a sink up there. What it boiled down to is that attic was an incredible space for a curatorial lab. We were working on objects and treating them . . . I mean, everything was right there. We didn't have to do a thing to it. And you had all this natural light because of the skylight. It was a huge skylight in that thing. The way we had it worked out, ranger activities and maintenance were going to be on the second floor, and there was going to be work areas for the rangers to develop programs and put slide shows together and all kinds of stuff. Then on the first floor, there was going to be a reception area, superintendent's office, and my office. They had a fully equipped kitchen there, which would have been ideal for a break room for the troops coming over from the Truman house, for folks wanting to eat lunch there at the headquarters building.
Beings it was an old funeral home—I'm not good with architectural terms—it had like this portico off on the side where the hearses would pull up and download everything. Okay. Off this big portico, there was these beautiful French doors that opened into this office. That was going to be my office. [laughter] For the simple reason, now there's a justification for that, because that portico was the ideal spot for
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truck deliveries. It was up. We weren't going to need no forklift. All you have to do is just push the stuff off the truck and it was going to be right on the deck. Most of the stuff was going to be coming through my office anyway. It was just an ideal setup.
WILLIAMS: Shipping and receiving, right?
SANDERS: You better believe it, only it wasn't going to be bodies anymore. [laughter] The interior of that building had the most incredible solid oak woodwork. It had eleven-foot ceilings, which meant it wasn't going to be very energy efficient. GSA talked about at first putting some suspended ceilings in. But because of the height of the windows and the floor-to-ceiling sliding doors between each room—because each room was like a little parlor—it was just going to detract too much from it to put the suspended ceiling in it, so they weren't going to do that. All that beautiful oak woodwork, all those beautiful doors. I think I cried more over the loss of that woodwork, because they couldn't even salvage it, it was so badly burned. It was just beautiful.
WILLIAMS: How involved were you in the development of the personnel needs for the park?
SANDERS: Well, that was done at Ho Jo's with Norm Reigle and myself and Tom Richter, to some extent. We sat down and we decided . . . Norm knew what he wanted. He knew what he wanted, and all we had to do was find a way for him to get it. He had a vision. I don't care what anybody else says. He had a vision, he knew what he wanted, and we went about
33
implementing that action plan. December, no excuse me, in the first week of January, he and I went to Omaha. We had a proposed organizational chart with us. We had draft PDs with us. We were going to be meeting with the Position Review Board to see if they. . . to establish and set up a position or to set up the organizational chart. We went in to the Position Review Board meeting. I don't recall how many people were in that meeting, but there were a lot of people in that meeting, and they were firing questions at us right and left regarding each individual position we had identified on that organization chart. We justified every one of them the best way we knew how, and we got every one of them. We got authorization to fill every one of them, we got the money to pay for it, and the FTE, when we walked out of there that day.
WILLIAMS: By that time in January of '84 the park had its own budget.
SANDERS: Yes. I think the initial budget was like two hundred and fifty thousand and three FTE. Whew, give me a break, you know. [chuckling] The money . . . two hundred and fifty thousand . . . Of course, I've got the printout. I don't throw anything away. I've got the printouts from that first year. I really don't know how much more than the two hundred and fifty we had to request, because the bulk of our positions were being filled from April 15th through September 30th, so that was less than half fiscal year for the bulk of the positions. But the FTE was a real problem. Because, you know, when they gave the two hundred and fifty thousand, they were
34
thinking Norm's position, Tom's position, and my position for a full year, plus other expenses that may come up.
WILLIAMS: Do you remember any particular stiff arguments or stiff cases you had when you were before the Position Review Board? Anything you really had to go out and really lobby for?
SANDERS: Well, the only thing . . . I don't think we really had to lobby. We were going in to establish four divisions. Norm had very strong feelings on the cultural resources aspect of the operation of this park. He felt in his own mind it was every bit as important as visitor services and protection. He wanted it to be equal. He did not want one division chief trying to manage both divisions. He wanted a division chief over each one, that that was their bailiwick, they took care of interpretation, they took care of visitor services and protection. Then you have this other person whose only responsibility is that house, the artifacts in it and the care of those artifacts, and the preservation of that house.
By that time we had also . . . I don't know if it had any impact on it or not. I think the deterioration of the Lincoln Home had an impact on how Truman was developed. It definitely had an impact on how the tours were developed, because coming from Lincoln Home, I knew what damage the tours had done to the second floor of that house. That was a house that was built as a home. It was not built as a public museum, and the wear and tear of upwards to three thousand people a day tromping across those thresholds . . . well, you know what happened. I think Norm
35
was convinced in his mind that that was not going to happen at Truman, and that was one of the reasons why the visitation was so restricted. Another reason was because of the difficult traffic flow pattern to the Truman home. The Lincoln Home had had alterations made to it by the State of Illinois to ease the traffic flow, so it was not historically accurate on the inside. It is now. When it was restored, it was put back to the original and now they can't send traffic through there like they used to, like a meat packing processing company, Oscar Mayer.
WILLIAMS: They have tickets, too. You have to wait.
SANDERS: And who did they contact regarding their implementation of their ticket system? Uh-huh. That's another story, the ticket system at Truman home.
WILLIAMS: How did that develop?
SANDERS: That was developed under the theory that we were going to protect the home, going to protect the resource. We're here to protect the resource and to provide enjoyment of present and future generations. But protect and preserve comes first, okay? And that was Norm Reigle's philosophy. We're going to let people enjoy it, but to an extent that it's not damaged. I got to kicking around the idea then come up with the tickets. Tom got sent off to some kind of interpretative training in Mather in January or February of '84, and I ended up designing the tickets, the tickets we use today. Can't believe that. Admin person designing interpretation tickets. But you did whatever was necessary in those days you know.
WILLIAMS: That was a fairly unique idea in the Park Service at the time, wasn't it?
36
SANDERS: To quote the regional office, it was unheard of. [laughter] I mean, Norm Reigle took a lot of flak from a lot of people on that. He stood his ground. He felt he was right. I won't say he had a bunch of yes people down here on this staff, but he had us convinced he was right. It was the best way. We knew how to do it. If somebody else could come up with something different, fine, you come up with it. Until you come up with it, this is the way we're going to do it. And that has been instilled in every person that has come on that staff since then.
I know in recent times we've been contacted by Lincoln Home regarding the implementation of their ticket system, and one of the things that has come out is that their staff does not understand why that ticket system is implemented over there. Our staff knows why, and that's why they endorse it and they can explain it to our visitors without our visitors getting irate, upset, for the most part. You do have some people that do get totally unreasonable, but for the most part, when they understand why we do it the way we do, they don't have any problems with it. We've talked to Lincoln Home on several occasions expressing that philosophy, that if your people knew exactly why you're doing it, if they thoroughly understood it, if they accepted it, they could impart that information to their visitor in a positive manner, which is the way we do here.
SHAVER: Can you talk about the folks in the regional office? What folks, over a period of time, thought we were somewhat unreasonable and excessive in our request and who have finally come around to see our point of view?
37
SANDERS: I don't know if some of them have come around. They just thought, well, that's Truman, they're just carrying on in the Truman tradition. They're going to give them hell. [laughter] Because . . . I don't know. I really think. . . getting a little off track, I really think that man has had a lot to do with the way this park is operated, just his philosophies, and I do think Norm Reigle picked up a lot on Harry Truman. If they're going to give you guff, let them give it to you, but do what you think is right. And I haven't known Norm Reigle to be wrong in the six-plus years I've worked with him when it came to anything major regarding the operation of this park. I've never known him to be wrong.
SHAVER: You think we've won folks over in regional by our approach to the cultural resource and its interpretation.
SANDERS: I would hope so. I think when we started getting calls from Lincoln Home regarding . . . when they were talking about setting up their ticket system before they reopened the home after that massive million dollar restoration, I mean, they were getting feedback from us and they were wanting different types of information from us on how we did it, because we were the only one that had one like it. I understand there's something similar in the White House, but I have no in-depth knowledge of that.
WILLIAMS: While we're on the subject, what did you think of the gray carpet idea?
SANDERS: I thought it was unbelievable. I thought it was unbelievable. The concept of it blew me away for the simple reason, at Lincoln Home you've got your barriers. But having been in that home before the carpeting went in,
38
having been in that home, you don't want barriers. You don't want visible barriers, because it would take so much away from it. What has truly amazed me is the effectiveness of the carpet. One would logically think, oh, the public, they won't listen. But they do. Of course, you've got some people that stray off of it now and again, but jiminy Christmas, I would have never believed it would have worked like it did. Never. I didn't want barriers, but I didn't know how you could keep from having them. I never expected it to be as successful as it has.
WILLIAMS: You said earlier that Norm had his vision. What do you think his vision was?
SANDERS: I think he just . . . he just knew what he wanted. He knew what he wanted. I mean, he'd been here what, six weeks . . . almost two months by the time I got here. He'd gotten a feel for the house, and he knew what he wanted to give the visitor. He knew what he wanted that visitor to walk away from this site with. His ultimate goal—and he said this more than once to me—his ultimate goal was to have silent interpretation in that home. He said, "You give the people –" Like, he would get all . . . Oh, God, he would get to excited about the prospect of the three houses coming online. His mind would run amuck. He knew exactly what he was going to do with whatever house we got in which order. He knew exactly. There was no doubt in his mind.
He had this great concept, got the Haukenberry House, that we'd start the tours over there, we'd walk them down the alley, walk them
39
around the yard, do all this oral interpretation outside. When we got inside, the ranger would shut up and let the house speak for itself. He always felt that house could interpret itself if you gave them enough preliminary information on the outside. Because it's a truly incredible house, with everything there. I mean, people see the slide show here, and they get a lot of information from the rangers down at the . . . He said, "If they got to do something like that, you could have the tours going every ten minutes, and you could take more people through the house."
But his mind was always working when it came . . . He was a closet interpreter, almost to the point where he was dangerous. [laughter] But that was another thing. That was another thing with that cave. That had never been done before. People thought we were out of our freaking minds, including GSA, because they had never leased an underground cave before. But he was able to swing people around to his point of view because he always . . . When he was planning something like this, it was planned out in detail. He wasn't shooting from the hip. He had it thought out and thought out thoroughly. He had a way about him that he would get other people to see his view. I couldn't believe the day that GSA came around, the real estate division came around to his point of view. Now it's a showcase. Now they bring people out, because it's the only one they've got. It's the only thing they've got like that, and now they bring other people out.
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SHAVER: Talking about the division of the other properties as they came along, what was your understanding what each property would be and how each of those properties would be used in the operation of the park?
SANDERS: Oh, I don't know. There was a lot of conversation, and a lot of people just wishful thinking, whatever. I know our former facility manager wanted the Mae Wallace house for our maintenance shop, our maintenance office. I know Norm envisioned, I believe, what is it, the Frank Wallace? The furthest one? He envisioned that one as being required occupancy for a chief ranger or a law enforcement person. The Haukenberry, I think he envisioned as like a staging area. We'd have exhibits in there, have public restrooms in there.
WILLIAMS: Was he ever thinking of ever moving the administrative offices in there?
SANDERS: No. I never heard that discussed. There was some talk about the George Wallace home being an interpretive work area, possibly split between interpretation and maintenance. Because it's got a kitchen in it, and it would be a nice place for the troops to go for lunch and everything and also use the restroom. Then you could disconnect the historic john in the basement. [chuckling] I don't know. They talked about the basement in the Wallace house could be used for storage of materials and supplies. That's something we don't have. I'm talking about . . . your toilet tissue comes in these huge cases, your paper towels, and your stuff like that that you just don't have a place to store. We buy small quantities of it because we don't have a place to store large quantities of it.
41
WILLIAMS: How involved were you, before the home opened, with the contracts and maintenance projects?
SANDERS: Okay. Okay. When I came on duty, the electrical rewiring contract had been awarded by Omaha, and the metal reroofing project had been awarded by Omaha. The projects were not underway. They got underway after the first of the year, and they were running in tandem. Regional personnel were on site as project supervisors for those. Lee Jamison I remember definitely was on site for the roof contract. I don't recall if he was handling the electrical contract as well.
Of course, the day they opened the roof, we had a major sleet storm, and it did a lot of damage in the attic. Tom Richter just happened by the house and thought he'd check on it after the sleet storm and found the damage. That's when we had GSA guards in the house. They hadn't noticed it. We immediately called out to Ho Jo's where the day labor crew were staying because the roofing contract was awarded to a Pennsylvania firm, and they were all in here from out of state working on that. They came in, Tom came in, Tom called Norm Reigle at home. Palma Wilson Buell and her husband were just up here for the weekend visiting, and they came in and helped. I was out of town that weekend. I'd gone home. Then everybody came in and started mop-up activities, and then they had to make an effort to get the roof closed because they had . . . I mean, it was an unforecasted sleet storm, and they had no idea it was going to come down like it did.
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That, and on St. Patty's Day, which was just four weeks prior to the dedication. That in itself would have been enough to deter dedication and opening. Then on Monday morning . . . because that happened on a weekend, and Monday morning, Norm Reigle called in the regional office and reported the damage, requested assistance in cleaning up the yard because a lot of tree limbs and a lot of storm damage in the yard. But there was no change in the dedication or the opening date. It wasn't going to affect that, we were going to proceed on schedule.
WILLIAMS: So the roof problems didn't affect the schedule?
SANDERS: No. Then the fire on the admin building at the funeral home happened two weeks to the day later, and that didn't change any schedule either.
WILLIAMS: Were you involved in the early stages of the general management plan?
SANDERS: Not in conversations about it, just getting the people in here. I knew some of the members on the team. One of them was from Lincoln Home. They're the ones that had a little bit of a problem with Norm Reigle's ticket system because it just went against their grain. But he finally got them to come around to his point of view. Bob Holmes was the interpretative specialist on the GMP team, and he was from Lincoln Home. We went to supper a couple nights, and we talked about it. He'd just never heard of anything like this before. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: Who was the regional director before the park was dedicated?
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SANDERS: Okay. When I EOD'd over here, Jimmy Dunning was the regional director, and he left Omaha that month. Charles Odegaard EOD'd the first pay period in January, and he was down here on his third day in the job.
WILLIAMS: How would you describe both of their attitudes toward the park and their relationship with Norm?
SANDERS: [chuckling] During that month that I was here when Jimmy Dunning was still the RD, I don't recall any contact with him. I really don't remember when he actually left Omaha, and I just don't remember anything. But I remember when Mr. Odegaard came in. It was very interesting. To use a familiar term, Mr. Odegaard was not a green blood, and that can cause problems sometimes in dealing with people that are green bloods, that feel they have a better grasp of their situation and what they want to accomplish. He and Norm Reigle had some doozies, really some doozies. Overall, though, Mr. Odegaard was down here frequently prior to the dedication, after the dedication, just for different things. We hosted a zone conference one year for the superintendent's zone conference, and he was down here. I think he had a healthy respect for Norm. Norm was not a person that would say . . . If Norm didn't agree with him, he let him know, and he let him know why. I think he respected that, because Norm . . . I go back to the word “vision” for lack of a better one.
[End #4131; Begin #4132]
SANDERS: [unintelligible] Norm’s kitchen table.
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WILLIAMS: I'm looking at a memo to the region dated November 8th, 1983, about requesting additional funding. You said there was a story behind that.
SANDERS: As I say, in this document . . . He had told me . . . When I got here he showed it to me, and he'd put this together at his kitchen table. How many pages is it? Twelve pages long. Putting in his request for FTE and money for fiscal year '84, which was the year they were in at that time, plus increases to the base for '85. I know after the fact, and it's in the file somewhere, after the fact we went back over these figures and we weren't off but by minimal. It was truly incredible. I couldn't believe a non-admin person could put a package like that together and come so close.
WILLIAMS: Do you think Norm chose his division chiefs because they already shared his vision or attitude, or was there some persuasion involved?
SANDERS: Okay. He had four division chiefs. Me he just got potluck. With Steve Harrison, Steve Harrison was a very deliberate choice. There was some filming going on in the home, I want to say in October—
SHAVER: [unintelligible] . . . I think they sent them out in November.
SANDERS: Okay, and they wanted to get the house cleaned up spic and span for that filming. Tom suggested . . . he had a friend that was really interested in this kind of thing and was really good, would be really careful, because one of the things they were concerned about, they just didn't want anybody coming in there with Pledge and cleaning. So Tom recommended Steve Harrison, who was a co-worker of Tom's when Tom was at the Arch. So he brought Steve over here on a short detail to help clean up the house.
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Quite a few people got involved in the cleaning of the house, and I just don't recall all the parties involved. I know Carol Reigle, Norm's wife, was involved in it, and Steve and Tom, and I don't know who else may have been involved in it.
WILLIAMS: Were you?
SANDERS: No. I wasn't here then yet. Sue Kopcynski came out on a brief trip, and she was involved in it, I think. Then she went back to New Jersey and then she came back out on a detail later. Norm was really impressed with the way Steve just moved and operated throughout the house. The care he took, the sensitivity he had for the house, as well as the artifacts. He had formulated in his mind, this was the person he wanted for the permanent curator position, when and if we got it established. So that one was definitely earmarked.
As far as Tom was concerned, he'd been working with Tom since he'd gotten here in October, and Tom was experienced. . . in visitor services, so it was just obvious that Tom was automatically selected for the chief of interpretation position.
I think I mentioned something earlier before about the selection of Skip Brooks for the facility management position. He was a little nervous about that one because he wanted a sensitive maintenance man, and that beast doesn't exist too often. He'd checked out Skip's references very closely to see if he could develop the type of sensitivity that Norm wanted him to have for that house. That relationship, although it didn't last very
46
long—Skip was only here about fifteen months—it worked extremely well while Skip was here.
SHAVER: Did his experience at Maggie Walker play a lot in his favor, do you think, in fixing up that house, or being part of that renovation? Or do you know?
SANDERS: I really don't know. I really don't know. The only time I can remember Maggie Walker coming into play with Skip was when we were designing the alarm systems. He kept referring back, and those specs were initially drafted kind of along the lines of Maggie Walker. I mean, his experience from Maggie Walker had some input into the way our alarm system was developed here. I don't know to what extent, but it had some.
SHAVER: The only reason I know this, or at least I got the impression he had somebody else in mind for that before.
SANDERS: Yeah. There was a young man down at the Ozarks that Norm really thought would do an excellent job, but the young man didn't qualify. He didn't make the cert.
WILLIAMS: How much preparation was involved in the dedication?
SANDERS: I really have no idea. I really don't have any idea. Because it was being worked on by so many people. The regional office public affairs, Charlie Wieser, Dave Herrera, there were just so many people. Just the dedication. Clayton Conner. I couldn't remember his name the other day. I'll be darned. Clayton Conner, he was captain of the Park Service Police, and he was in charge of traffic patrol and law enforcement and had SET teams in here for the dedication. There were just so many people that had
47
so much to do. We were counting . . . no, we were planning on a beautiful outside ceremony on the steps of the Truman Library. Plan B was rain. Plan B involved lining up many school buses to transport visitors from the Truman Library to Chrisman Auditorium, because Chrisman Auditorium was going to be the alternate site if we had to go indoors. There were buses planned for and all this. We had vans. We had what? three or four eleven-passenger vans from GSA motor pool on Bannister Road.
After the ceremony at the home, where all the crowds and the bands and all the folderol was going on, then they had a private ceremony, a ribbon cutting ceremony, at the home. Then special invited guests, and these guests were identified by the color of their tickets. Everybody had admission tickets for the dedication, and the color of your ticket indicated whether you were going to get to be one of the privileged few that got to go through the home that day. Or if your ticket was a different color, then you were going to be part of the privileged group that went through the following day. Then we had the vans to transport the folks from the library down to the home to go through the home and then bring them back. That went on all afternoon after the dedication ceremony itself.
It was incredible, because we were dealing with so many elderly people that were really frail. There were quite a few people from Mr. Truman's cabinet there, some of the older relatives, and never an incident. The only person that fell was Margaret, getting into one of the vans. She
48
tripped going up the steps. She's the only one. None of those elderly folks fell. I couldn't believe it. I thought we were extremely lucky.
WILLIAMS: What was your personal participation in the preparation?
SANDERS: [laughter] I've got a statement in here that says, [reading] "The accounting is primarily limited to the period of December 1 through April 30th and does not take into account the difficulties associated with the heritage district nor the period of May 1 through May 11th, which is a muddle in the minds of all of us." And I really don't have any strong recollections. I just know we were really on a high because we knew we were going to get everything done on time. Regardless of what had transpired in the last six months, everything was going to be done on time, in fine shape, in spite of some people's incompetence along the way.
WILLIAMS: Were you at the home or the library for the dedication?
SANDERS: I was at the library. I was at the library. I was loading the visitors into the vans to go down to the house after the ceremony. Prior to the ceremony, I was seating visitors, checking ticket colors, make sure they got in the appropriate seats.
WILLIAMS: Were you impressed with the day's activities when it was all over with or pleased?
SANDERS: We had a party like you wouldn't believe. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: [unintelligible]
SANDERS: No. Because we had so many people in, some people had to stay at the Ramada across the street. I'm thinking the regional director was at the
49
Ramada. We all went out to the Ramada. We changed clothes. We all brought a change of clothes with us, because we knew if we got through this without rain or everything on schedule, I mean, it was party time. Because we'd been holding back and holding back trying to get everything worked together. Boy, we had a heck of a party. We all met out at the Ramada because it was our staff plus the SET team people and regional folks that had come down, because quite a few regional folks had come down for it. We just had a heck of a good time. And we went over to Chi Chi's for supper. The RD got sick and we had to take him back to the hotel. [laughter] We really celebrated in fine style, but boy, we had earned it. God, we had earned it.
WILLIAMS: The director of the Park Service was there.
SANDERS: Mr. Dickinson.
WILLIAMS: Had he been to the home before that day?
SANDERS: I don't believe so. I don’t believe so, but wouldn't swear to that, but I don't believe so.
WILLIAMS: Did you get to meet him or any of the dignitaries, other than showing them onto the bus?
SANDERS: I have no recall. [laughter] I really don't. It’s just . . .that's why I enjoyed looking at the dedication pictures last week, because I was seeing things I didn't remember, you know. I was standing right there, I was in the picture, and I didn't remember, you know. Boy, it was gone, you know. It was such an incredible high. Oh, God! You can't imagine.
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WILLIAMS: Well, once you came off of the high and we were into the operations for that first summer, how would you describe your duties?
SANDERS: My duties became more routine, they became more like they were at Lincoln Home. But then, after some time, not too much time, we got cranked up on the collection storage facility. That kept us occupied for a couple of years until we got that all set up.
WILLIAMS: Could you talk a little bit more about the cave and your role in the development of it.
SANDERS: I didn't have much of a major role. I didn't have much of a role at all in that, except I enjoyed watching it come together. I mean, to me, it was almost unbelievable at the beginning to see that thing come together. Forgive me, but watching Norm Reigle's mind work and how he's going to play his game and how he's going to get what he wants and nobody's going to feel the pain. Because when you look at all the equipment and the furniture that was purchased for that facility in over a four year period of time, it's truly amazing. Truly amazing.
WILLIAMS: Because he was able to get the money?
SANDERS: You betcha. You betcha!
SHAVER: All right. Tell the sneaky way he did it.
SANDERS: [laughter]
SHAVER: Of course you're a token spirit [unintelligible].
SANDERS: No. He just . . . well, I really shouldn't make this public. He always said his ace in the hole was the attic, the hats in the attic. The hats in the attic
51
and the wine bottles in the cellar. Okay. You can take anybody through that home, and they're going to be moved to a certain extent. You take them down in that basement and you show them that wine cellar and where it was, and they're going to relate to their grandparents' or their parents' basement. You take them up to that attic, open up a couple of those casual hat boxes. You've seen pictures of him in these various hats, you see all the clutter in the attic, and whoever you got with you, you've got them by the tail. Not everybody got to go to the basement, and not everybody got to go to the attic, but I knew anybody was going to the attic or anybody was going to the basement, they were going to serve a future need. Because they didn't tell him no. He always had a big justification. It wasn't these whiney-, wimpy-type applications, I mean justifications that you see. It was solid, it was concrete, it was well thought out. This is what I want to do and this is how I can best do it.
And uh I mean, I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm leaving, so . . . [chuckling] There was a five-year program developed for cataloging the collection whereas Harry Truman would get 302 money for five years in a row, to the tune of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. That was fine. Andy Ketterson said yes, we will get that. John Kawamoto said yes. That was put in place before John Kawamoto retired. Okay. Last year was the sixth year. I had no idea we were getting that money. I'd get printouts out of my computer, and there it's sitting there staring me in the face.
SHAVER: Minus one percent.
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SANDERS: Yeah. Like twenty-four thousand seven hundred dollars. I go into Norm and said, "Look at this. They gave us the 302 money. The five-year program's done. So being the straightforward . . . I mean, we've always been straight shooters. We call up and ask. We said, "Are we really supposed to have this?" And they said, "Yes." Like, what are you calling us for? Far be it for me to ask another question. Start spending it, you know. You start spending it. And that's how we've been able to do what we've been able to do with as far as the cataloging of the collection, because we have had that money every year for six years. And there's no reason to think we won't get it this year. Well, all things considered . . . Well, a lot of things might be turned upside down this year, but . . . .
SHAVER: As far as cabinets and furnishings, though, it's always like end of the year money or money that—
SANDERS: Right.
WILLIAMS: I got the impression he was real tight on his budget at the beginning of the year.
SANDERS: He operated the budget in a very unorthodox way, according to me. [laughter] To him, it was probably perfectly logical. But after a couple of years I really saw the merit in this. And I would love to do it in another area myself, but I'd never get away with it. He would. . . in early fall, he'd have his division chiefs come in with a listing of their needs for the next fiscal year: personal services, supplies, material, travel, et cetera, utilities, et cetera. We'd have to have them all organized with a total of how much
53
we were going to need to do our operation. So then he and I would sit down, and we'd compile them to see how many hundreds of thousands they were over what our appropriation was going to be. Okay. Usually, they weren't over all that much, remarkably. I don't know if people just were timid, or they didn't have a big vision, or whatever.
Anyway, he'd sit down and he'd distribute the money, an allocation to each division chief. Then if a division chief was working more than one operational account, then they had to divide that money into their accounts. They were given a block of money that they could spend in whatever area they wanted to. But he wouldn't divvy up all of it. He would always keep a pool, and that could be, that would range anywhere from two to ten thousand dollars. And that would be stashed in administration. If there were any emergencies that came up, like . . . it didn't happen, but say the furnace went out and you had to replace a major component in the furnace. The money was going to be there. Okay. He'd tell these division chiefs, "That's all you got. That's all you're going to get." And they'd grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. But they'd get along with it. He wouldn't give them any less than he knew they could get along without.
So then, the pool would fluctuate during the year based on needs. You know sometimes somebody would need something, and he'd have the money distributed to their account. Okay, but then when it came toward the end of the year, then we're watching that pool real close. And any
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money in the pool, any money that any division chief didn't have obligated by like the end of August, that money got moved out of their account and into the pool. Then the pool was spent for curatorial storage, furnishings, cabinets, shelving, lab equipment, what have you. We started buying the cabinets over at the library. They were stored at the library. We had been buying them for a couple of years before we even got the cave facility, and we got it in February of '88. But we'd been buying furniture for it and storing it over at the Truman Library for two years before we even got it.
And, I got tickled [laughter] because we would buy, on the museum cabinets . . . sometimes folks in region can be real picky about justifications you have on purchase orders and stuff, and a lot of this museum equipment is sole source stuff. I mean It's very specialized stuff, and it's difficult to get competitive quotes on it. Especially when I was originally buying it back six years ago, four and six years ago. So what we'd do, we'd buy the guts to them. Well, nobody paid any attention when we were cutting purchase orders for shelves or those trees or clothes racks or stuff that go into them. They're going to holler when you pay eleven hundred bucks for the cabinet, but they're not going to holler when you're buying all the guts. So we'd buy all the guts for them first, and then we'd turn around the next year and buy the cabinet because buying the cabinet, we had a justification because we already had the insides for them. So they had to let us buy the cabinets. [laughter] If you bought the cabinet first, you might have a little . . . Because, we'd get flak from them, you
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know, and you might have a little trouble if you bought the cabinet first, but if you bought the insides first . . . It worked. It was legal and it worked.
WILLIAMS: How would you describe the working relationship among the division chiefs, the original ones?
SANDERS: The original ones? All of them great to videotape. [laughter] Because Skippy was a typical maintenance man, and he had to be indoctrinated into the sensitivity of the home. And what was fun was watching Tom Richter and Steve Harrison try to instill in him the sensitivity. They did that. Without a doubt, they did that. But in addition to instilling sensitivity, they also tried to include their flaky perspective on some things, and that was not well received at all. [laughter] Because I guess folks in their line of work are more dreamers, they're not realists. They don't deal with the reality of the situation you know. I know sometimes when little things would go wrong at the Truman home, it was Skip's job as a maintenance person . . . I mean, when the water lines and electrical lines, you've got problems like that, that's your maintenance person's bailiwick. You know they'd come up with some of the most offhand, unrealistic ways to deal with these problems. Skip was really good natured about it, you know, really good natured about it. I mean, because they were dead serious. They were dead serious. They'd come up and they'd talk to Norm about some of their cockamamie propositions, and . . . oh God, I don't believe
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this. When are these people going to join the real world you know? [laughter] But it was fun to watch. God, it was fun to watch.
WILLIAMS: So Steve and Tom were the idealists and you and Skip were the pragmatists.
SANDERS: Yeah. Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Just trying to get things done and they were trying to—
SANDERS: Oh, yeah. And then we had the great instigator, who was always stirring up trouble.
WILLIAMS: Who might that be?
SANDERS: Reigle. When anything got a little dull, he would always instigate something you know. And somebody, no matter what he did, somebody would always bite at it, just like a catfish going after a worm. They'd bite at it. [laughter] But it was fun, it made the job fun. There was no harshness about it. There was no vindictiveness about it. It was fun, it was really fun. I sure had fun.
WILLIAMS: What are some of the things he did to stir things up?
SANDERS: Oh, God, I wish I could recall. He's been doing that since the day I knew him. I know he would . . . Something would come up, there'd be a problem or something, and he'd tell Tom, "Skip says this. Blaaaaaa!!!!" [laughter] I mean and you know weren't divided, just our mental attitudes were so different. You know the two of us were so different from the other two. You know, It was funny. It was funny. Tom, Tom, for me, was a joy to work with on budget. Boy, you didn't mess around with
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Tom's figures. I mean, he was excellent when it came to managing his money, excellent, absolutely excellent. I'll tell anybody that that asks me. Harrison? Give me a break. The man could care less. He wanted to watch his little ants and termites and stuff under a microscope. He didn't care about the money you know, he just figured Norm will make sure it's always there. And it was. So he didn't take an interest in the budget at all.
WILLIAMS: You said that everybody worked well together?
SANDERS: Overall. You know there's always going to be conflicts and stuff, but overall, yes, oh yes. It was much different than my previous work experience, much different.
WILLIAMS: Better?
SANDERS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
WILLIAMS: Do you think that Mike Healy had the same realistic attitude as Skip Brooks? You and Mike against—
SANDERS: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Uh, Mike Healy was in his own little world. His own little world. He was a totally different type personality than Skip Brooks. He came from a different type background than Skip Brooks. Skip Brooks was a former ranger that had converted to a maintenance position. Healy had come up through maintenance seasonally and then up to the grades program. I think he'd been a wage grade. I forget what his highest wage grade was. He came to us from Everglade as an engineering technician, I believe. I could be wrong on that. But it wasn't a standard
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maintenance-type position. They had totally different backgrounds, they had totally different views, approached things in totally different ways.
WILLIAMS: Let’s take a break.
[End #4132; Begin #4133]
WILLIAMS: Has there been difficulty in attracting facility managers to this park?
SANDERS: There has been a difficulty in filling ah several of the permanent positions in this park. Uhm, the first time we filled the facility manager position after Skip left . . . He left in August of '85, and we had to advertise that thing three times before we were actually able to fill it. And it wasn't filled until March of '86.
WILLIAMS: Were you not getting quality applicants or were you not getting applicants, period?
SANDERS: Both. Both. I couldn't understand it. Just could not understand it.
SHAVER: The same kind of a situation with the curator position?
SANDERS: Right. Last year when we went out to fill the curator position when Steve Harrison transferred to Atlanta. It was advertised twice in-house and went to OPM, and OPM is how we filled it, with a person that had not one day of government experience at the nine level. And that broke my heart.
SHAVER: Even seasonally you've had trouble with the curator position.
SANDERS: Right. We've, we’ve had a real healthy amount of applicants, seasonal applicants for the winter ranger positions. We almost get three times as many applicants for the winter ranger positions as we do the summer positions, but we figure, well, that's because all the college kids want to go
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to the glory parks in the summer, and they're content to get what they can get in the winter. But we haven't had a healthy number of applicants when I try to fill the temporary museum aide positions. There's never a whole lot to pick from. Sometimes we haven't picked very well, but other times we've gotten lucky. But uhm Let's see. Now last year we filled a GS-9 curator position with an OPM cert, where a person didn't have any government experience. She had curatorial experience in a couple local museums, or whatever. Uhm early, early this year we filled a chief ranger position. Two applicants certified to us. To me, that was absolutely pitiful. I cannot believe there aren't a lot of seven, nines out there wanting a position. Because we filled it at the nine level. We filled it from the in-house cert, but it was filled from an individual that wasn't on Park Service rolls, on the agency rolls of another agency.
WILLIAMS: Is this something symptomatic agency-wide, or has this particular park got a bad rap, or is it unknown, or—
SANDERS: To me, it is unknown. I have tried to figure it out. Because you advertise other chief ranger positions at a nine level at another park and they'll have twenty-five aps. You advertise curator positions in other parks and they've got multiple responses. I don't know. With this last time we filled the facility management position, I really felt excited because we got nine aps for it. Four of them were eventually certified to us, but there were nine applications to start with, and that's the best response we've had in years on any position that we've advertised for in-house. I’ve got no. . .
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I've talked to some folks up in region about it, and there's no explanation. I've talked to Norm about it. I've got no ex . . . why this is like that. I'm curious to see what they're going to get on mine. It's out right now.
WILLIAMS: We haven't talked much about the people below the division chief on the original staff. Do you have any memories of that first year?
SANDERS: Well, Rick Jones and Cindy Ott came in from Lava Beds. And they got married in September, and we immediately shipped her out to FLETC for nine weeks the day after they got married. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: [unintelligible]
SANDERS: Oh, yeah, we're really on top of things, aren't we? [laughter] It's our own method of birth control. [laughter] Okay. Uhm we had a good crew. Uhm all the temporaries were known to one person or another on the staff. They did not come in unknown. Tom Richter had worked with Cindy Ott at the Arch and was highly respective of her skills and ability. He wanted Cindy, and Cindy thought, well, maybe they've got a job for Rick too beings it's a new park, and sure enough, we were able to work it out. We recruited for his position, and then we just did a lateral reassignment on hers. Uhm so we got Cindy and Rick in here uhm.
Karen Tinnin, who is still on our staff, was on the original seasonal staff for rangers. She came over. She'd worked with Tom at the Arch, as did Jody Adkins and hmm . . . who else? Jody Adkins and there was a young fella that had worked with me at Lincoln Home, John Whitfield. Tom had met him when Tom came over to Lincoln Home in that
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September of '83, and he was really impressed with John, and our staff was well impressed with him, too. And so we were able to get them to apply so we could hire them for the summer. There was another little girl named Chrissy Barker. She had previous experience, either down at Fort Scott or Carver, I forget, one of those two parks she worked at, and some of the troops knew her. So everybody on the seasonal staff was well known.
The young lady we hired as a museum aide, Lisa Bosso, she had made an acquaintance of Tom shortly after Tom got here. And hmm she had a degree in textiles and something that would be of great benefit in her job, a job here at Truman as a museum aide. Tom kept in touch with her, and then when we went out and recruited for the museum aide position through OPM, he made sure that she was hmm aware of it. She ended up on the cert and we were able to hire her.
SHAVER: Was that initially a temporary position, or did it go out permanent?
SANDERS: No, it went out temporary, but it was filled by OPM. Since then, I've been doing the temporary museum aides, but that first one OPM did it.
SHAVER: At what point in time was it converted to a permanent level?
SANDERS: I'm thinking it was about a year.
SHAVER: Did you go back to OPM again?
SANDERS: I'm sure we had to. I don't recall. I'm sure we had to, because I remember at the time of the conversion, she went into it as a step two.
WILLIAMS: Any other . . . What about Palma?
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SANDERS: That feisty little critter. She came up as the lead, and then ah . . . I don't know my years. Anyway, after a couple of years is when they switched from the O-26 series to the O-25, we went in and her position was upgraded to a seven.
SHAVER: I'd gotten the impression that there was an operations evaluation that resulted in that.
SANDERS: Well, that was an operations evaluation in April of '86. At that time . . . That conversation the discontinuance of the O-26 series was about the same time.
SHAVER: In '85, it seems like.
SANDERS: It was close to the same time, because on the operations evaluation, we went in for two upgrades, got both of them. Went in for Palma's and went in for Jenny's, from a GS-4 secretary to a GS-5. Palma got her seven, and then it was '88 that Tom went on detail to the Arch. Is that right?
SHAVER: Yeah.
SANDERS: Yeah, went on detail to the Arch. Then he ended up getting a job and staying over there. When he went over on detail, Palma got temporary promotion to the nine. And then when he finally went over to the Arch for good, then it was advertised and she applied. And I don't recall the number of applicants at that time. I just don't recall. I just don't know if it was a large number or a small number. I just don't have a frame of reference on whether we had a good turnout or response to that one. But that's when she got her nine.
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WILLIAMS: Was Palma Wilson much different as a chief ranger than Tom Richter?
SANDERS: [laughter] Yes. And that wasn't restricted to the gender. Yeah. Hmm she just had a different way about her hmm. [chuckling] She just uh . . . she was a little more assertive, she was a little more aggressive hmm. She seemed to get things done with not as much support. The troops seemed to relate to her better than they did to Tom, because they knew there was no . . . you didn't clown around with Palma. When she was serious, she was dead serious. When she was clowning around, she was clowning around. But you knew the difference. You didn't have to try to read her mind. You knew. Everybody knew where they stood with Palma.
WILLIAMS: Why was the lead park ranger position eliminated?
SANDERS: Well, what we ended up doing, we eliminated three. Because when Rick and Cindy left, we didn't fill those positions, those permanent positions. Then when Palma got promoted to the chief ranger position hmm, we didn't fill that position. What we ended up doing was . . . Because FTE and budgets were starting to be a big issue, what we ended up doing was we converted them to all to subject to furlough positions.
SHAVER: I can recall this back in the fall of '86 when Rick and Cindy left, Norm had more or less said that he wasn't willing to refill . . . that he wasn't going to make those permanent positions anymore, he was going to endeavor to make them seasonal positions and hire local folks and all that. Why did he take that approach in the beginning, and then why did he retreat from it about a year later?
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SANDERS: Well, I can't speak for him. I can speak for my opinion on it, and that was the poor quality of seasonal applicants. And we didn’t we weren't getting a variety of the applicants, and some of them were barely qualified. We weren't seeing seasonal certs with scores of a hundred. That's what I had always seen at Lincoln Home. I mean, you took the cream of the crop, and the cream wasn't coming to the top on our certs. We weren't seeing those high scores. And uh when we did get somebody good, then he got to the frame of mind, well, if we get enough of these seasonals so that they know our operation and they can do a good job for us, then we'll throw it open to competition. He loved competition. Because he felt people excelled when they were competing, or if you were in a horserace. And you've been around here when those certs have been open from OPM, and you knew what was going on. I mean, it was dog eat dog world on who was going to get the best application in and how OPM was going to read it and understand it, because that was the name of the game. We weren't going to read it, we weren't going to rate it. It had to be these people that didn't know squat about our operation that were going to be rating them. And you know it was a horserace when all these kids were in there working on their 171s, and Palma and I were having our unofficial school of one-seventy-ones and KSAs. You know, helping them.
SHAVER: You've got a notch . . . you've got a board in there with all the permanents you've gotten, is that right?
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SANDERS: Yeah, we got ten. [laughter] We have ten, that we know of. That we know of. If there's more . . . eleven counting Marshall, because I just found out about Marshall. I found out about Marshall last week.
SHAVER: What did he get?
SANDERS: He got an interpretive job at Isle Royale.
SHAVER: [unintelligible] How much was Palma a protégé of Norm? How much of his supervisory and leadership styles did she adopt as her own or did she emulate?
SANDERS: I think you're a bloody fool if you didn't emulate that man. And I'm speaking for myself as well as any other division chiefs. Because what he did worked, and you don't fight that. If it works, why fix it? He had been her chief ranger down at the Ozarks. She had more experience working with him than the rest of us did. But he would love to see . . . He would see people, and you know he would see potential in them you know. Like he said, when he was down at the Ozarks, he saw her and her feisty ways and her knowledge of her job, what she perceived to be her job, and he just saw potential in her you know. He wanted to push that. Not push it, but he wanted to encourage it. He wanted to encourage it. And God knows he encouraged me. Even though he couldn't do nothing about my grade level here, he gave me all the encouragement in the world.
SHAVER: Were there other people that he saw potential in and brought on?
SANDERS: I'm trying to think. I know there were a couple rangers that he really hmm could see something in. Sometimes I'd look, and I couldn't see nothing.
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[chuckles] But he could pick out something. He could pick out something in them. And on that little green . . . Gene Warren, he was one. And he's wanting, to you know he’s not wanting a Park Service career. He was wanting to teach. And Norm you know, he didn't discourage him from wanting to teach at all. But Norm always thought, geez, he would make such a wonderful interpreter. He just thought there was something special with Gene. I'm trying to think of anybody else offhand.
WILLIAMS: Would you say the regional office attitude has changed in the last few years toward this park?
SANDERS: I don't think it's changed. I think they, I feel they have a healthy respect for the quality of work that comes out of Truman, of the visitor experience we provide for our visitors. I don't know. I've said it from day one, and I always told Norm this, I said, "Truman is a first-class act. I don't care." It’s going to be, in my mind, it was going to be a first-class act. Nothing goes out of here handwritten. It's typed, it's in proper format, and I get upset when I see something handwritten in the mail envelope, I really do. Because to me that is the sign of a tacky operation. You send a finished product out of your park, I don't care where you're sending it to. And that's one of the things we've almost always done here.
I think we have a healthy respect in the regional office, and I guess I can relate better to admin on that than the other divisions. Some years ago they were starting a new thing called property procurement reviews, where they went around to the parks and they checked out all of our
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property and procurement records. Okay, who was the first park they did? It was Truman. Ask them why Truman. Yeah, we're close to the regional office, but we're not that close. There's other parks closer. They said, "Because we knew your records would be in order and we wouldn't have any problems." That was the first one. They wanted to come here to see how it's supposed to be done. I mean I don't mean to be arrogant about it, I really don't, but they knew when they came here it would be done as well as it could be done, and this would set the role model for them to look at when they went to the other parks.
WILLIAMS: Do you think there's an advantage to be a new park and to do things right from the beginning?
SANDERS: You better believe it, because you've got nobody's screw-ups to deal with when you come into the site. The only thing you've got to do is stay on your toes and make sure you don't screw up. But it's a hell of a lot easier coming in and starting from scratch.
WILLIAMS: I remember early on some inspector general people were here.
SANDERS: August. We opened May 15th and those suckers were here in August.
WILLIAMS: How did you relate with them?
SHAVER: What was their devious mission? [chuckling]
SANDERS: Their devious mission was to see if it was feasible for some other agency to operate the Truman home other than the Department of Interior, meaning a local. There were several parks in this region that were targeted for that. Hoover was one. And ah they came . . . I've had
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previous experience with different types of investigations, and it didn't bother me hmm. What bothered me was their purpose. The investigation itself didn't bother me, what bothered me, I mean what bothered me was their purpose. I mean, thinking it was more feasible to turn this home, after we'd killed ourselves to get it open, over to maybe Jackson County Historical Society or Aunt Minnie's Sewing Club or something. I thought ah . . . That was, that was totally inconceivable to me. I mean, we'd busted our asses to get this place open. We have it open six weeks and they're sending the IG in here thinking there's a better way to do it? Over my dead body.
WILLIAMS: What was Norm's reaction?
SANDERS: Similar. A little more vocal. [laughter] My thought has always been, when it comes to investigators, I don't care what they're investigating, I'll cooperate with them to the hilt, because then you've got no negative feedback. Even if I don't like what they're doing, I'll still cooperate. I'll give them everything they want to know, because that's going to help you in the long run. I firmly believe that. I've been in situations where a superintendent would not help at all, and it was nothing but ugly, ugly, ugly, and I do not want any part of that kind of a scenario. Whatever they want, they got.
SHAVER: How long were they here, and what did they do?
SANDERS: I don't know what all they did with everybody else. I know what they did with me. I know they went over all my property records and over all my
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procurement records. Which you got to keep in mind, that was the first year I was here. It had been fiscal year '84, and we were spending a lot of money and we were doing a lot of procurement, we were buying all new equipment. Well, some of it wasn't new, but most of it was new, you know, and maintaining all the property records and all that. And everything was up to date. They couldn't have wanted it any better than what they got.
SHAVER: What were their conclusions, at least at this particular site?
SANDERS: I don't know what the end result was. We never heard no more. And Hoover's still in the system and so are we. [laughter] So I guess it's a moot issue. But they did make comments. They wrote back comments on the quality of the administrative efforts, in excellent shape. They didn't expect to find a new site to be set up as well.
SHAVER: Next year, the operations evaluation. You're a veteran of those. How did we come out in the park's first formal operations evaluation?
SANDERS: In an operations evaluation, you have what you'd call primaries and you have what you call recommendations. When they, when the team identifies a primary, that means that's a shortcoming, a defect that they are highly recommending be corrected. If you got recommendations, that's just their two cents worth. I was devastated on the . . . because I'm thinking . . . no. That was the procurement review. I don't remember any primaries offhand on that first OE. I really don't.
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SHAVER: There was just like a handful of recommendations that I recall. One of them included a sign.
SANDERS: [laughter] We know who was the team captain on OE, don't we folks? It was John Kawamoto. [laughter] That's why that recommendation was made, because he'd been trying since '84 to get a sign.
WILLIAMS: Finally got it.
SANDERS: They finally made one right, so then we could put it up.
SHAVER: In time for his retirement.
SANDERS: Right. We had him down here for the dedication of the sign. [laughter] Prior to his retirement.
WILLIAMS: Do you feel like there's any effort from the region, or even WASO, to undermine the system that's been set up here?
SANDERS: No. I don't.
WILLIAMS: Would you say the reverse is true, that they often use the park as an example of the way things that should be run, at least historic sites.
SANDERS: Yes, I do, I really do. And I don't mean to be arrogant, I really don't. But I really do think that.
WILLIAMS: I understand you're moving on to another position.
SANDERS: Yep.
WILLIAMS: Could you describe that a little bit?
SANDERS: Well, I'm going to administrative officer position at New River Gorge, Tennessee.
SHAVER: West Virginia. We have to get that straight.
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SANDERS: Did I say Tennessee? Oh. They won't even let me come on board. Gee whiz, yeah, that’s New River Gorge, West Virginia.
WILLIAMS: Do you feel like you're leaving any major loose ends here at Harry S Truman?
SANDERS: Not any major loose ends. There's always going to be things you can't get tied up. I think . . . There's a lot of things going to be hard to deal with. I'm going to have to block it out of my mind. I know things won't be done the same way I've done them. There's more than one way to do things right. My prayer is that they just get done. Because Truman has always had a reputation of being on top of things, and I just don't nothing, I just don’t want that to change. I just don't want that to change.
WILLIAMS: If you come back in five or ten years, or we hope before that, do you expect to see any major difference in the park?
SANDERS: Oh. What I expect to see and what I'd like to see?
WILLIAMS: Both.
SANDERS: Well, I would certainly hope by that time all three houses are online and we're making the best use possible of them, whatever that may be. I'm not in a position to make that determination hmm. And I would hope that maybe the farm home's online, too, you know because the potential's there. Hmm the Park Service has already got money invested in that place. They were given I believe it was a fifty thousand dollar grant to help with the restoration costs of that house. We've got money invested in the place already, and I would just think if the opportunity would come ah
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for us to acquire it, it would certainly be a godsend. It'd sure make the site more interesting. It'd be more challenging for the people that work here. Because after a while, I know that's one of the things that affected myself, as well as Norm, there just didn't seem to be any challenges left. Everything's running status quo. You're hoping to get the houses on, but they're not coming on yet. You're just sitting around waiting and everything's going along its merry little way, and same old thing, if it's working, you don't mess with it, you know. So it kind of left….
WILLIAMS: Do you get the feeling that there is kind of a new era now that most of the original staff is gone, do you think they will not mess with it?
SANDERS: I have no idea what they're going to do.
WILLIAMS: You haven't gotten any feelings?
SANDERS: You know . . . I don't have any problems with them improving the service we provide, if there's a way to improve it. And I say improve it, I don't say change it just for the sake of changing. I say improve it. If you can give the visitor a better experience, by all means, do it. I've got no idea how. That's not my bailiwick. I do believe that Truman has been set up on a very firm foundation financially, as far as our budget base is concerned. I don’t think, I think if people use their heads and their God-given intelligence that they'll be able to maintain it as it is and improve on it. But it didn't happen by luck.
WILLIAMS: Is there anything in your mind that stands out as your greatest achievement as the administrative technician in this park for the last six or seven years?
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SANDERS: Ah, my first thought goes to opening day. To have it all come together and work, really work. You do these things in theory, you do things on a test basis, and everything worked. I mean, I had all the positions filled, I had all the people moved in here, everybody had a house over their head. We had a real pasture for Skip Brooks’ horse . . . .
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SANDERS: He had to bring in here, his two dogs. It seemed like it was incredible, the opportunities of challenging myself that I was given here in the early days, but the rewards were incredible, absolutely incredible.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
SANDERS: You're welcome.
WILLIAMS: And good luck at the New River Gorge.
SANDERS: West Virginia. [laughter]
END OF INTERVIEW