Audio
Oral History Interview with Angie Alvino
Transcript
Abstract: Angie Alvino became the administrative officer for De Soto National Memorial in 2005. During her interview she speaks about her career path with NPS and how she moved from a volunteer position in 1993 at San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico to acting superintendent of De Soto National Memorial in Florida in 2006. Alvino examines the cultural differences she noticed between Puerto Rico and Florida, how she adapted to these differences, and how she views her role within the broader NPS. Furthermore, Alvino speaks to the gaps she sees in programming at De Soto National Memorial. She specifically points to the lack of Native American history presented and lack of outreach to non-white visitors as issues she believes the NPS should address.
DAVID WHISNANT: Okay. This is an interview at De Soto National Memorial on the 9th of May 2002 [2006] with Angie Alvino who is the administrative officer for the park. And let’s start, Angie, just by your telling me your history with the park service, where you were before. This doesn’t need to be long but just—
ANGIE ALVINO: Okay.
WHISNANT: — to kind of say how you got here from where you were.
ALVINO: Okay. Um, well I started volunteering at, uh, San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico.
WHISNANT: Oh.
ALVINO: And the military archives in ’93, ’93/’94. Um, and then I got a job with the park service as a park guide in 1999, I think. ’99.
WHISNANT: That—I want to go on but that—so many people have said—have mentioned this pattern to me.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: I started volunteering, then I got—is that the sort of main entry route?
ALVINO: Yes. Yes, it is. I’ve heard a lot of people that that’s how they start. They start volunteering and they get a, um, a seasonal position or a temporary position.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: Which I had a temporary position there, um, and then from there I moved to Everglades—
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: —as a park ranger in interpretation.
WHISNANT: Full time.
ALVINO: Full time.
WHISNANT: And when was that?
ALVINO: Yeah. That was in 2001 till 2005. And then in 2005, I moved here. And, uh, while I was in Everglades, I—I did a supervisory—I got a promotion, temporary promotion to, uh, supervisory park ranger for the Northwest District, Gulf Coast District.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: Um, and then I did that for a couple of months, and this came open and I applied, and I got the administrative officer position.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh. And that was a big kind of move for you—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —in terms of duties and functions—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —and all of that.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: I’m a little surprised that you—that’s like out of the frying pan and into the fire.
ALVINO: Yes. Well, my—my ultimate goal in the park service is to go back home to Puerto Rico—
WHISNANT: Oh.
ALVINO: —as superintendent of that park.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: And this was a good move for me. I’ve already worked the front line, know everything, you know, that had to do with, um, customer service, interpretation, and all that stuff. And I wanted to know what goes behind the scenes.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh. So—
ALVINO: So what better way to do it than—
WHISNANT: Learn how to shuffle the papers and—
ALVINO: That’s right.
WHISNANT: —all of that stuff. So this is a very—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —this is a very kind of strategic move for you to—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —to get here and—and do this.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: And not to—not to count any chickens before they hatch but—but how many years would you expect to have to spend—of course it depends on what comes open but—
ALVINO: What—yeah.
WHISNANT: —but best case, um, you might spend two, three, five years in this job.
ALVINO: Probably I would say, um, about five.
WHISNANT: About five.
ALVINO: Four or five. Yeah, about five. I, even here, I’ve already done some acting as a superintendent.
WHISNANT: Oh, really?
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Oh.
ALVINO: While Charlie was gone to, um, um, Fort Pulaski, I was acting superintendent during the summer, actually for a long time, for like six months, um, on and off I was acting superintendent for this park.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: So it gave me a hands-on experience—
WHISNANT: Right. Right. And when you’re acting superintendent, that’s an official appointment, it’s not that you just kind of wonder into that office and do what needs to be done during the time.
ALVINO: No, I actually—they kind of recognized that up in region, in the regional office.
WHISNANT: So you were appointed—
ALVINO: Knew that I was acting—
WHISNANT: —acting superintendent.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: They knew that I was acting for—
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: —a while.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Yeah. So you have rather different experience from anybody else I’ve talked to in terms of prior parks. So can you just say a little bit about that coming from Puerto Rico and Everglades and then coming from Everglades to here? What are the big differences; what are the—I mean, obviously there are many similarities because you’re operating under the same regs and you know, all of that stuff—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —right?
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: But what are—
ALVINO: Well cultural-wise, it’s very different. Um, in Puerto Rico and I don’t know if you’ve ever been there—
WHISNANT: No.
ALVINO: —but, um, working in Puerto Rico was very, um, I guess we were all like family even though we’re not related. Um, we—we would get there, and we would all work together and, um, there was a sense of a, um, a unity where there was no, um, within the coworkers, not—not management but within the coworkers, there was no sense of division.
WHISNANT: And how big is that park?
ALVINO: The park, oh, God.
WHISNANT: I mean like how many staff people did they have?
ALVINO: Oh—
WHISNANT: Compared to this.
ALVINO: Oh, compared to this?
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Oh, God. There is a lot.
WHISNANT: A lot.
ALVINO: There’s a lot. There’s, um, I would say over a hundred.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Over a hundred—
WHISNANT: So it’s—
ALVINO: —employees.
WHISNANT: —it’s a major park.
ALVINO: Yes. It’s, um, it—it takes care of two-fourths, um, in the San Juan area and all the walls surrounding the city.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, most of them are maintenance workers.
WHISNANT: Yeah. Right, right.
ALVINO: The majority of the employees are maintenance, but it was—it was good because we all worked together. At the time, there were only two law enforcement officers to cover that whole area—
WHISNANT: Mm-hmm.
ALVINO: —which was not enough. And as an interpreter, we kind of helped them out in, you know, visitor safety and things like that.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, so it was—it was good working there, very nice.
WHISNANT: So the—so the sort of work culture was—was different.
ALVINO: Very different. When I got—when I moved to Everglades, everybody was, um, kind of distant it seemed like, not as—how can I say this?
WHISNANT: Go ahead, Angie, just get it out.
ALVINO: Yeah, the—they weren’t, I don’t know, it just seemed like there was a barrier between each division. Like you know, this is interpretation, you don’t tell me how to do my job—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: I do my job—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —you do yours.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You’re in maintenance, you worry about maintenance.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know, I don’t need to help you; it’s not in my, you know.
WHISNANT: And Everglades is a big park too, so. . .
ALVINO: Everglades is a big park; it’s huge.
WHISNANT: In size, they would’ve been comparable.
ALVINO: Um, actually, Everglades is—
WHISNANT: Is bigger?
ALVINO: It’s bigger than San Juan. There’s a lot more, um, people that work there, too. I think probably twice as much as San Juan. Because Everglades is like 1.6 million acres.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, we were as far as we can be from the headquarters.
WHISNANT: Okay.
ALVINO: We were about two hours away from headquarters.
WHISNANT: Oh, you mean physically at the park.
ALVINO: Physically. Physically as far away from headquarters. Um, well it presented a lot of challenges. Um, a lot of decisions that were made just, to me, did not seem logical.
WHISNANT: Mm-hmm.
ALVINO: For example, if there was a—a training that we all needed to attend but it was like a half-hour thing or an hour thing that they would make us drive down there to attend this meeting or whatever and then drive back, instead of having one person—
WHISNANT: Right, come down.
ALVINO: —come down and talk to everybody from the district.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Things like that.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: It’s just a lot of waste of government time, personally, I think. Um, and also, we were so far away that we were kind of forgotten sometimes.
WHISNANT: Right, but you were doing interpretations there, too?
ALVINO: I was doing interpretation.
WHISNANT: Both—so at the—at the end of your time—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —at San Juan you were doing interpretations, too?
ALVINO: Yes. Yes. I, I, because I started as volunteering, and I was pretty much in the military archives just going through documents and research and things like that. And then I got a temporary position that lasted about two years, um, as a park guide, which I was doing tours and interpretation and things.
WHISNANT: What about your academic background, what—
ALVINO: I went to school in Massachusetts, um, and I studied business administration.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: Um, and then from there, I also studied, um, I also went to the University of Puerto Rico after that and studied Portuguese. So I took up languages.
WHISNANT: So you’re trilingual.
ALVINO: Yes. Um, and then I started working with a tourism company in Puerto Rico. Um, and then from there, that’s when I moved into the park service.
WHISNANT: Why Portuguese? Is there a big Portuguese community in—I never knew there was but—
ALVINO: Um, no. No, uh, just, uh, I had a lot of friends in Massachusetts that were from Brazil.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: And I kind of started learning the language a little bit and got interested in that.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: So I went to school and learned it.
WHISNANT: All right.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: So, okay, so here you are in—in Everglades—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: And you’re doing interpretation again.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Um, and you stayed there for—
ALVINO: Five.
WHISNANT: Five.
ALVINO: Five years almost, yeah.
WHISNANT: —years. Five years.
ALVINO: Five years.
WHISNANT: Um, and then this job just came open. You were basically looking for—
ALVINO: I was look—I was actually looking for, um, a supervisory position. I was acting as supervisor in Everglades, and I was looking to move up in my career.
WHISNANT: And at Everglades, you were GS—
ALVINO: I was GS-9.
WHISNANT: GS-9 already.
ALVINO: GS-9 already.
WHISNANT: In theory, you—
ALVINO: Actually—
WHISNANT: —can be—
ALVINO: Actually, I was GS-9 and then I was promoted to a GS-11. So I was a GS-11 when I applied for this position.
WHISNANT: Oh. And here, you can be a superintendent at GS-11, is that—
ALVINO: I don’t know.
WHISNANT: —GS-12 maybe.
ALVINO: I think it’s 12. So right now, I was—I’m a 9 but I figured it’s the same, it’s just a lateral move from GS-9 to a GS-9, but in a whole different area.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And this is a good move for me—
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: —strategically because it’ll—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Teach me a lot of what goes—
WHISNANT: Jay said to me when I talked with him the other day that this park really is, I think the term he used was “a stair-step park.”
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: That is it—it really serves the function of giving people entry to jobs at a lower GS level than they could probably get it elsewhere.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Do you think that’s the case?
ALVINO: I think so. There’s not a lot of parks out there that have a superintendent as a GS-12.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: So—
WHISNANT: Ordinarily, it would be—
ALVINO: Like, I don’t know, 14.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Depending on the size of the park.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Yeah. I’m just like an administrative officer. I’m doing things here that usually a GS-11 or -12 are doing in other parks as an AO.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: But I’m learning everything.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Everything that has to do with administration wherein in other parts, the AO has people that are in charge in human resources only—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —contracting—
WHISNANT: Budget only.
ALVINO: —budget only.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Here I do everything.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Right. So, this really is a—a good move for you it sounds like.
ALVINO: Yes. Yes, mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: And at least that was your theory. Has that turned out to be the case; is that—
ALVINO: It’s a lot of work. I think it’s a lot of work for—for the grade, to be honest. Um, yeah, I’ve been doing things, um, that other people tell me, well you shouldn’t be doing that. You know, that’s a GS-11 or a GS-12 job. It’s like well, if I don’t do it—
WHISNANT: Like what; what would be a couple of examples of things that ordinarily—
ALVINO: Um, like, uh, the GPRA stuff.
WHISNANT: Like what?
ALVINO: GPRA, which is, um, it’s—it’s a report that we have to do every year. Um, it’s, uh, it deals with, uh, performance, how the park is performing. Um, like for example, visitor satisfaction. It’s a goal. Um, our goal for the park is I think, I don’t know, 88 percent of visitors who will be satisfied with the park and—
WHISNANT: And how is that assessed?
ALVINO: It’s—it’s assessed different in different ways because there’s different goals. Um, sometimes it’s by projects that are done. Also, for visitor satisfaction, there is a survey that’s done every year.
WHISNANT: And how is that done? It’s—
ALVINO: Um, that—
WHISNANT: —like a sample day or two or?
ALVINO: That’s like a month. We have a month-long, we have about 200 or 300, I don’t know, forms that we hand out and every day, um, there’s interpreters usually do this because they’re out with the public.
WHISNANT: All right.
ALVINO: They take about fifty, um, and then they hand them out and then they talk to people about what it’s about and all that stuff and then the results come back in, and we have to report back. We have to go into this, um, uh, system, computer system, where we log in and report. Um, it’s just a lot of—it takes a lot of time, um, away from other things.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, so that’s one of the things, um, there’s PMIS projects, there is, uh—
WHISNANT: PMIS?
ALVINO: PMIS is a project management, um, information system where you kind of log in and you say well, we need extra money for certain things. And that is connected to GPRA. That is also connected to FMSS, which is another computer program. I mean, I can give you all these acronyms.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: And it’s, um, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work for—for—it is. It truly is.
WHISNANT: Right. And a lot of responsibility.
ALVINO: And a lot of responsibility. Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Right. Right. So when you came here, this is a much smaller park, you’re getting experience that you want to get. Um, you talked about the difference in sort of work culture from San Juan to Everglades. Did you experience a similar, I mean, it’s much smaller, so—
ALVINO: It’s much smaller, so, um, you know, once you get used to that at Everglades, you kind of say, okay, that’s the way it works out here in the states.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know. Um, I did after, you know, couple of years, I did make some good friends in Everglades but there’s very few; you can count them on one hand—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: — that I would—I get that closeness that I had like in Puerto Rico. Um, um, here, it’s a small park; we’re—we’re all, um, overworked. We’re kind of stretched out. Um, I’ve been here for a year. I, I mean, I get along with everybody, but I don’t think it’s the same culture that I had in Puerto Rico where, um, for example, everybody in the morning, you get there, and you give each other a hug and a kiss on the cheek because that’s—that’s our culture. You know, and it’s like hey, good morning, you.
WHISNANT: You know, this is not a cheek-kissing park.
ALVINO: No. No and here it’s like, uh, hey, good morning. You know.
WHISNANT: Right. You have three kids here.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Is your husband here?
ALVINO: No, I’ve been alone since—God, I’ve been alone with my kids since I was pregnant with my youngest.
WHISNANT: Wow.
ALVINO: Yeah, he’s eight.
WHISNANT: Oh, my goodness.
ALVINO: So yes.
WHISNANT: So this is a—
ALVINO: It was a big move for me to leave Puerto Rico.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Everybody—
WHISNANT: Because you had family support there.
ALVINO: I had family. I had—my—my parents were there. I had my grandparents were there. Um, my friends were there.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, so when I said I’m taking a permanent position in Everglades, everybody’s like, you’re taking the kids to Everglades? But there are alligators over there.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: I’m like, I’m sure if it was not safe, people would not be working there.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: So it was a—it was a—a major jump and it—and it was a challenge for me.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Because I knew everything that had to do with cultural history; I knew a lot of our history. Whereas Everglades was more of a natural history.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: All of a sudden, I had to learn about birds and animals and—
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: —how am I going to interpret this?
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know.
WHISNANT: That center of my brain doesn’t work. I mean, it just doesn’t work.
ALVINO: Yeah. It was very hard for me to try to get that connection with the visitors and try to—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —you know, and interpret it all.
WHISNANT: And you were managing three little kids by yourself.
ALVINO: Yes. They were little. They were, um, there was six, five, and four, well three. Three.
WHISNANT: Six, five, four, three.
ALVINO: Three. Yeah. Yeah, because my daughter was six at the time. My other son, he had not turned—he was four and the other one was three, yeah, when I first moved here.
WHISNANT: Wow.
ALVINO: So and it was hard for them too because they didn’t speak English.
WHISNANT: God.
ALVINO: None. So, I mean, I had to leave them in a daycare where people couldn’t communicate with them because—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —they didn’t speak the language and they couldn’t communicate either.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: But they learned. Yeah.
WHISNANT: Our kids are both—our little boys are both in a bilingual Spanish program in school and it’s—it’s intensive Spanish every day. And they just—they just started.
ALVINO: That’s good.
WHISNANT: I mean, that’s—kids do it.
ALVINO: Yeah. Yeah.
WHISNANT: But anyway, so you had—this was a—Everglades was a challenge at many levels.
ALVINO: At many levels because I—I started as a GS-5. And as a GS-5 with, you know, learning a new park, I had to leave everything behind because they did not pay for my move because it was my first permanent position. Um, so I came here with nothing. And then living in Naples, which is not cheap as a GS-5 level is very difficult.
WHISNANT: And a GS-5 then would have made what?
ALVINO: Twenty.
WHISNANT: Twenty—
ALVINO: $23,000/$24,000 a year. That was it.
WHISNANT: How in the world?
ALVINO: I made it, though. I knew it was going to be—
WHISNANT: Lots of—lots of boxes of Hamburger Helper or something.
ALVINO: Yes. And rice, white rice.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: Yeah. Yeah. So, um—
WHISNANT: But now it—it should be somewhat easier because you’ve got a, a thirteen year old and—
ALVINO: Um, eleven. She’s eleven. She’s eleven, um, and then Christopher is nine and Sean is eight.
WHISNANT: And they’re all totally fluent in English by now.
ALVINO: Oh, yes.
WHISNANT: Do they still pre—do they prefer English, or do you all speak English or Spanish at home?
ALVINO: I speak both to them. I speak both Spanish and English. They will answer back in English.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: My daughter will sometimes, you know, answer back in Spanish and so will my second, middle, child but not the youngest.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: He’s like, “I don’t know what you’re talking.” I’m like, “you understand exactly what I’m saying.”
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: So back to the park, um, there was this sort of cultural move.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: There was the work culture move to Everglades. And the—the cultural move wouldn’t have been as great from Everglades to here.
ALVINO: No.
WHISNANT: But the work culture move, it—in a way it sounds to me like the work cultural move sort of took you back to San—the San Juan thing where you’ve got people who have to work closely together and do.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: But it’s not as—
ALVINO: But it’s not as—
WHISNANT: —warm—
ALVINO: —warm or close. Yes, I mean, we have no choice here but to work together—
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: —otherwise, we can’t function.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: I mean, we’re a permanent staff of four.
WHISNANT: What do you do?
ALVINO: Yeah, exactly. But work together.
WHISNANT: Let me ask you about the—the De Soto thing.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: All right?
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: I have never heard of this place. Anne has been working on her Blue Ridge Parkway book for 15 years and that has—I don’t know if you knew she had done that.
ALVINO: No.
WHISNANT: She—the first serious history of the Blue Ridge Parkway she is publishing this fall. I’ll show you the website.
ALVINO: Okay.
WHISNANT: But, um, but you know, we have, she and I because I always read what she writes and you know—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: All that. So, we’ve been sort of immersed in national parks systems for years. So, this is not a new system for us.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: But we had never heard of this park.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: And when I heard of the park and went to the website and looked, “oh my God.” A park for—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —surely this is not the case.
ALVINO: Yes. When I first got here, I was like, oh. And I saw, um, I saw their programs and everything and I said, yeah, um, I was a little concerned because they were depicting a lot of the Spanish—the Spanish side but not enough of the Native—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —side. Um, and let’s face it, most of the Spanish were, um—
WHISNANT: Not very nice people.
ALVINO: Not very nice people, yes. They were brutal. Um, so yeah, I was—I didn’t know about this park either. Actually, when I heard of it, I heard of it when I was in Everglades. I told my brother, “Can we go to De Soto?” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I know where that’s at.” Well, we went to the beach.
WHISNANT: Oh, to the fort.
ALVINO: To the fort. And I—and I said, “Wow, I didn’t know that this was,” you know, and I was looking for park service signs and—
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: —not a clue. Later on, I realized, I’m at the park.
WHISNANT: The next park is down the road.
ALVINO: Yes. But you don’t know that, you know.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: So it—it was—it was interesting. It was interesting. Um, I—I know a little bit of the history because I’ve watched the programs. But working in, um, as an administrative officer, I don’t have time.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: I do not have time to learn the history of the De Soto and all that stuff.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: I know of it because I grew up learning all this Spanish conquistadors and everything.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, but not like I used to before I was an interpreter, which I would have, you know, submerged myself in everything.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: So let me ask you another thing about, sort of about the culture here.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Um, I talked with Anne—with, um—
ALVINO: Sandy?
WHISNANT: Diana.
ALVINO: Oh, with Diana.
WHISNANT: Yeah. Well, with Sandy too. This came up with both of them.
ALVINO: Okay.
WHISNANT: Sandy said when she went to the Ozarks, which she did at some point—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —she was talking to the superintendent, and she asked him what programs about women you had here. He said—I mean, he was totally, completely oblivious. So she developed a huge number of very good programs.
ALVINO: Okay.
WHISNANT: This has been a long-running interest of hers. So, and then when I talked to Diana, I told Diana that and you know, and I said, what’s it like here? What’s been your experience? And she said that she hadn’t—she’d taken a special interest in developing women’s stuff in the living history.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: So, this has been a thing for us. And I asked her, “Okay, what about the work culture and what about the whole, you know, promotion system and all of that?” And she said some things about that, so what—how do you see that?
ALVINO: Here?
WHISNANT: Here.
ALVINO: In the—in this—
WHISNANT: In this park.
ALVINO: In this park. Um, the—
WHISNANT: And I will not quote you by name.
ALVINO: Okay. There is—there is a tendency to be a men’s club or a good ole boys club. Um, and sometimes I guess if you don’t belong to that club—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —it can be difficult, yeah, for you, so. . .
WHISNANT: And difficult in what way? How would that manifest itself?
ALVINO: Well, um, not getting the respect that I think your position—
WHISNANT: Your—you’re a clerical worker or something like that?
ALVINO: Exactly.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Yes. That you deserve, you know, so things like that. Things like that. Or like there is, um, a chain of command and people don’t recognize you as acting superintendent; they will go above you.
WHISNANT: Whereas they would never have done that with a male.
ALVINO: With a male acting superintendent, yes.
WHISNANT: All right.
ALVINO: They’re still very much part of this park, unfortunately.
WHISNANT: Mm-hmm.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: You came right at the end of Charlie’s—
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: —time; right?
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Did you overlap?
ALVINO: Yeah. Yeah, I was here—I was here, let’s see, I actually worked at Bayside for, uh, on a detail before I came here, so but I was still getting paid by the park in February. And then I moved here in April. Um, and Charlie was here maybe for a couple of days.
WHISNANT: Oh.
ALVINO: And then he was gone. He was I think in Abraham Lincoln at the time. He was in Abraham Lincoln at the time. Um, so he was gone over there, and I was here. And, um, actually at the beginning that I was here, Mike was acting for a little bit and then—
WHISNANT: Mike was?
ALVINO: Mike, yeah, he was acting superintendent for a little bit.
WHISNANT: Mike—
ALVINO: Mike Riley.
WHISNANT: Riley.
ALVINO: Yeah. Or supervisor, I don’t know.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: What they—title they gave him, but I guess he was in charge. Um, and then—and then Charlie came back and said, I think I was here, God, maybe a—a month or so even and then Charlie said he was going to be acting from now on. I think I took that role back last year. May? God, yes. I left it that long. Until Sandy showed up.
WHISNANT: And Sandy came in—
ALVINO: March? Yeah. Yeah. So—so yeah, I was, um, acting for that long. Um, I probably would’ve come, you know, back and forth every once in a while.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And kind of take over. Um, but still, there—there was a lot of pressure.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Reports due and then on top of that, trying to do my job.
WHISNANT: Right. Oh, my goodness.
ALVINO: Yeah. It’s—yes.
WHISNANT: How in the world?
ALVINO: I tell you, I have—I have earned my greys here. It’s amazing the amount of grey hairs that I’ve gotten from this job.
WHISNANT: Really?
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Literally.
ALVINO: Literally. Literally. I—I looked at my stuff and I’m like, God, I’m ancient. And it—it wouldn’t—
WHISNANT: I look like a GS-14.
ALVINO: Exactly. I mean, I had to dye my hair, which I never had to before be—because of all the greys that all of a sudden were sprouting.
WHISNANT: Wow.
ALVINO: And—and I said, you know, it’s the stress of the job because I’m—I’m doing a job of a GS-12 or -13 or whatever as a GS-9 plus on top, I’m trying to do my job.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And there’s just so much pressure plus the things that were going on in the background here. Issues. Um, employee relations and stuff that I was kind of shoved in the middle, um, of that.
WHISNANT: So could—could you, without naming names or anything, just briefly characterize a little bit of that because—
ALVINO: There was a lot of animosity between the coworkers. Um, apparently things had happened in the past, which I wasn’t aware of because I wasn’t here at the time. But, um, you know, things were said, things were done, then, um, you know, whole, uh, investigation had to happen.
WHISNANT: Mm-hmm.
ALVINO: And I was kind of thrown into that and so you know, there was a lot of turmoil at the time and, um, just caught in that. And along with all the pressures of, you know, trying to find a home.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Because I didn’t have a place to live at the time.
WHISNANT: Good Lord.
ALVINO: I had to find a home, the job, getting kids in school, being acting superintendent, being thrown into this thing. It—it was a lot. It was a lot, so, yeah, I’ve learned.
WHISNANT: You were not involved in the living history stuff; right?
ALVINO: No.
WHISNANT: So that—that has never been a part of your—
ALVINO: No.
WHISNANT: —your—
ALVINO: I don’t want to be a part of that. No, it’s—I don’t need that.
WHISNANT: And why do you—I’m not suggesting you should want to.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: But you said, I don’t want to be a part of that. Why don’t you want to be a part of that?
ALVINO: Well, um, people, uh, and I understand to a degree, um, but sometimes when people are doing the same thing over and over again, they kind of tend to, um, take over and they’re not open to new ideas or new suggestions. And a lot of—a lot of times they think that if it’s not their way, then it’s not right. Or, um, it can’t run without them, like they’re indispensable.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And one thing you learn in the park service is you can be replaced. You’re gone, they hire somebody else and that’s it.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: But maybe some people have not had a lot of experience in—in that area. I mean, I did interpretations, not only with the park service but, you know, in tourism in Puerto Rico for many years. And—and—and then in dealing with the public, um, which are—you need to be open to suggestions and have an open mind. And not everything is black and white. There’s some grey areas.
WHISNANT: Right. Not many.
ALVINO: Not many but there are a few. So there’s—there’s just a whole bunch of turmoil that I don’t really want to get involved with.
WHISNANT: Still going on.
ALVINO: Yeah, to a degree. Mm-hmm. So that’s why living history, I kind of want to stay—
WHISNANT: So when—
ALVINO: —my little section.
WHISNANT: —you say you don’t want to have anything to do with it. That has more to do with the sort of internal politics of the presenters than it does with the enterprise itself?
ALVINO: Exactly.
WHISNANT: Or do you—do you have reservations about the enterprise itself?
ALVINO: Well, I—there’s a lot of things that could be done with that program. Um, and I understand that, uh, we—we are interpreting De Soto into Spanish and all that. Um, but at the same time, I just think that there’s so much that—of what really happened.
WHISNANT: Like what?
ALVINO: Like, you know, with the Natives and all that stuff. Um, I don’t know, I just think that, um, sometimes, um, I was taught, um, that when you’re doing a program, you—you kind of have to show both sides.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: You know.
WHISNANT: Like if you’re presenting Hitler, you need to present both sides of Hitler. Right?
ALVINO: Yes. You know, he might’ve been, you know, uh, a visionary.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: But he was this.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know, so—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: So, have you seen a lot of presentations even if you haven’t been in them? ALVINO: I have seen. I have seen. Mm-hmm. Some, I would say, um, I’ve seen landing; I was here for that. I was here for some of the talks in there also. Because I go out there during the season, have a lunch out there, you know.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, so I have heard them talk.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Yeah. Most people that come, I guess they’re mostly interested in the weapons.
WHISNANT: Yeah. Right.
ALVINO: And a weapons demonstration and all that stuff. And that’s fine. That’s good.
WHISNANT: Apparently, when I talked with Diana about what she’s to do, she clearly understands herself to be partly educating the public or trying to educate them.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: As well as entertain.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Got to give that. But she mentioned that Jim—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —Garnet, is that his name?
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Jim Garnet.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: Uh, is much more entertaining. He doesn’t think, at least according to her, I have not talked to him.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: But, um, Diana’s take is that he’s more just into entertainment. Is that—do you think that’s a fair characterization?
ALVINO: Um, I—in certain aspects, yeah. I think, um, I just think that maybe he was put in the position prematurely.
WHISNANT: Well, he was a ranger?
ALVINO: He is—he was appointed camp lead. So, he’s kind of in charge of the camp.
WHISNANT: But is he work—he works with the park service.
ALVINO: Yes.
WHISNANT: As a ranger.
ALVINO: As a ranger.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: As a ranger. Um, but here, they have—even though on paper, he’s only a GS-7, here I think he—there is a notion that he’s in charge of the interpretive division.
WHISNANT: But technically, Cliff is. Right?
ALVINO: Cliff is. Um, and I think that Jim, he’s so good, um, storyteller. Not a good interpreter. There’s a difference.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: They’re very different. He’s a storyteller. WHISNANT: And how long has Jim been here?
ALVINO: I think he’s been here for like six seasons. Six seasons.
WHISNANT: And here’s Cliff with five months’ experience. So that—that must be a—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —an issue.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: Just structurally that would be an issue though.
ALVINO: Yes. Mm-hmm. Plus, you have Jay that now is a GS-9. So technically, it would be Cliff, Jay, Jim; but in reality, it’s—
WHISNANT: Jay and Cliff.
ALVINO: Yes. Yes. Unfortunately, yeah.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: Um, let me float a little thing out about the oral history, I mean the living history thing. You know, when we heard about the park and heard about the—the job that we were going to do—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —you know, I went on the web and looked, and I said, “Oh my God, De Soto, nobody needs this.”
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: And then we looked, and we saw living history, you know.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: And I thought, “Oh, my God, living history.”
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: Diana has been working on that book for all these years.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: And there’s some very bad examples of living history on the parkway both historically and even now.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: So, and—and we have read enough to know that living history, they’re it has its big advocates, it has its big factors and it’s not a resolved argument.
ALVINO: No, there’s a lot of things like why would you have, um, blonde with blue eyes depicting Native Americans?
WHISNANT: Right. Just for starters.
ALVINO: Exactly. I don’t think that’s a good image.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And things like that.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: You know. WHISNANT: However, you know, I mean, whatever reservations we have, you know, for whatever reasons—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —um, it—it occurs to me that if you don’t do a living history at De Soto, what do you do? You know, you don’t have two forts and—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —a walled city and—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —you know, and you don’t have a million-and-a-half-acre Everglades and you know—
ALVINO: Exactly.
WHISNANT: —you’ve got twenty-five acres, no archeological stuff, no historic structures. You don’t have anything. So, if you’re not going to do oral his—I mean, the living history, what are you going to do?
ALVINO: Yeah. There—there are other things I guess that they can develop. Right now they started doing walks on the trail—
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: —which they didn’t do before.
WHISNANT: Oh, really?
ALVINO: Yeah. And I think that’s a great idea. Right here you could talk about the native plants, about what the Native Americans used to eat, how did they use these plants? I mean, there’s a lot of things that they can do to expand.
WHISNANT: And you can certainly talk about environmental change.
ALVINO: Oh yeah.
WHISNANT: All of that.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: And I saw the—there are photographs of this huge wide beach here—
ALVINO: I, I think that—
WHISNANT: —and now it’s—
ALVINO: Yes. And now we’re losing it.
WHISNANT: I mean, De Soto park is literally up against the wall.
ALVINO: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: So, the environmental stuff could certainly be done.
ALVINO: Yeah. There’s—there’s a lot of things that could be done.
WHISNANT: But can you, just to follow my sort of little thesis—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —can you imagine, if you were superintendent—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —of De Soto and suddenly by some edict, oral history is out the window, you know, an edict from NPS or whatever—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —you know, it’s just gone. Would you breathe a sigh of relief? What—what would you do? I mean, here you’ve got a park, you got twenty-five acres.
ALVINO: I mean, how many signs can you put? Really.
WHISNANT: But, um—
ALVINO: Yeah, there would be nothing. You can’t do anything here.
WHISNANT: So, you would have nature walks.
ALVINO: Nature walks.
WHISNANT: And you might do some environmental programs—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —but that would be about it.
ALVINO: That would be about it because you—you can’t talk about it. Yeah, that would be it. There’s—there’s nothing here but I can’t—
WHISNANT: So you—would you—would you then feel like you were literally kind of up against a wall if the oral history rug were pulled out from under you as superintendent here?
ALVINO: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole interpreter thing—I mean, it’s kind of hard to say as park—as a park employee and as a, you know, old interpreter, um, you want to do programs for the public even though this is considered a dog park.
WHISNANT: That’s what it was.
ALVINO: A dog park.
WHISNANT: An odd park. Really?
ALVINO: Oh, yes. By the neighbors. That’s all they do.
WHISNANT: Oh, a dog park.
ALVINO: Yeah. Yeah.
WHISNANT: Okay, now I’ve got it.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: Now I’ve got it.
ALVINO: They—they—all they do is pretty much bring their dog.
WHISNANT: So the federal government is supporting a dog park.
ALVINO: Yes. That’s what it seems like, yeah. Um, some of them will bring friends and stuff during the season for the, you know, the living history camp but most of it is just, um, a dog park and—
WHISNANT: Dog walkers.
ALVINO: Dog walkers. Uh, another thing that I’ve noticed that it’s—it’s not happening in a lot of parks and it’s kind of a set but we’re not—we’re not advertising enough. We’re not out there enough. And I work with that in Everglades, trying to get, especially the Hispanic population; there’s a lot of Hispanic population.
WHISNANT: This is, by my—my observation, which is one week, you know—
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: —who knows how—how this is.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: It’s kind of lily white.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: Except for the kids, the school kids and they’re obviously very—
ALVINO: Very, yeah.
WHISNANT: —mixed but the adults, this is a—it’s not whites only, but it’s kind of whites only because there’s nobody else here.
ALVINO: Exactly. And—and, um, I know we are surrounded by a, um, retirement community but I think we need to go out there and—and promote more. Um, I don’t know, different type of visitors, um, usually at night. Not at dark but after we close, we get Spanish families come in to picnic. WHISNANT: Really?
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: After you close?
ALVINO: After we close. Because in the Spanish culture, um, that’s what parks are for. Parks are where you go with your family, have a picnic. You play, whatever, sports, you play baseball or whatever, um, and—and then you go home. That’s what, you know, parks are for. And for a lot of the, um, I would say most of the Latinos I guess that are here in this area, probably, um, afraid of, um, the government, the police.
WHISNANT: Because of the—the—
ALVINO: Yeah. Because of the whole immigration thing. Um, so they see us in uniform and that’s intimidating to them. I mean, we can’t do anything but—
WHISNANT: Presumably, like everywhere, a huge percentage are undocumented.
ALVINO: Exactly. Yeah, so obviously, they see us, and they don’t approach us.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, and that’s why they come, and they wait till we leave to use the park.
WHISNANT: And the park service, I mean, the—the—the border closing and all of that stuff that’s going on, I mean, that’s seeping into all kinds of agencies.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: But presumably not in the park service. I mean, you all don’t really have any either—
ALVINO: We do down there. We have a lot of parks, um, and—and—and they see this uniform too working with the border patrol because the law enforcement officers that are in parks like Big Bend, um, and—
WHISNANT: Do work with the border patrol?
ALVINO: —do work with—yes.
WHISNANT: The—
ALVINO: They do work with the—
WHISNANT: So NPS is cooperating with border patrol?
ALVINO: Yeah, because we’re right there at the border. WHISNANT: Right?
ALVINO: Yeah. So, um—
WHISNANT: So there’s a—
ALVINO: —that affects too with, you know, people coming in.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: I, um, I’ve met, in the church that I go to, I’ve met a lot of Spanish folks, um, and I’ve told them, you know, come down to the park, you know. And a lot of them don’t speak English.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And I always say, “Well, just ask for Angie.”
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know, and sometimes when I hear people talking and I’m back here, I’ll come out and I will speak to them in Spanish because there’s always that comfort zone.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know, you’ve got to—there’s nothing better than you going to somewhere and you can’t speak the language and all of a sudden, you hear—you go to Europe and you hear somebody speaking English, hey.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Are you from the states?
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: So, it’s—
WHISNANT: Right. So, if you—if—if you became superintendent, I gather that that, um, one of your hopes would be to bridge that barrier to get more Hispanics and non-whites.
ALVINO: And non, yes.
WHISNANT: In here.
ALVINO: In here, mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Let me ask you one, maybe this is the last question I have right now. Um, the whole matter of outreach—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: — um, Sandy talked about outreach in very positive, passionate terms. She’s very committed to that.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Somebody I talked with here, I literally don’t remember who it was, was very negative on outreach. You know, this is really not something we need to spend a whole lot of time at.
ALVINO: I disagree. I disagree. I think that’s how we get people—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —interested in the park service. It’s how we get stores for the park service.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: People—you go out there a lot of times—you know, I lived in Naples and Everglades is a huge park. You would think that that the whole, I mean, a park that’s the size of the whole tip of Florida—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —people would notice that. Right? There are so many people that I met, because sometimes I will go into the store right after work with my uniform and they’re like, you know, where do you work? Everglades National Park. Where’s that?
WHISNANT: It’s the next million-and-a-half acres over.
ALVINO: Yeah. It’s right there.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: It’s your backyard.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know and people don’t know unless we do outreach.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: And that gets people interested. It’s like, oh, I have this park, I have this little sanctuary. You know, and that gets them involved. And they, you know, and when the parks are in trouble, they start writing to congress—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —and their representatives and they help protect the park. So I think—
WHISNANT: Because the parks are in trouble right now.
ALVINO: Exactly. And I think outreach is a very important part of—
WHISNANT: Including the educational, like the schools.
ALVINO: Including educational. Because a lot of kids are, um, you know, they might come from parents that, you know, don’t have any clue—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —as to what the park service is. And this is a way to educate them.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: Um, I—I enjoy outreach. I don’t think we do enough of it here. I—I really don’t. I—
WHISNANT: Because of lack of commitment, lack of staff, both. What? ALVINO: Both. I think both because, um, there’s so many things that could be done here. Um, but everything is concentrated only on living history program. And that’s why I think—
WHISNANT: So—
ALVINO: — that—that the park or, um, the management or whoever, you know, in charge or to blame, I don’t know, has sort of this, um, you know, like horses.
WHISNANT: Blinkered.
ALVINO: This is it.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: This is it. There is nothing else—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —out here.
WHISNANT: Right. Right.
ALVINO: And they’re missing out on a lot of stuff.
WHISNANT: So, living history is kind of a—kind of a sponge that—that sucks up the resources and sucks people’s time up and—
ALVINO: Yeah. But at the same time, if you don’t go out there and tell people that there’s a park here, nobody’s going to come to a living history. Only the same people year after year after year, the same people will come.
WHISNANT: Do they ever take any of the living history stuff into the classrooms? I mean, do costumed people or—
ALVINO: No.
WHISNANT: —archivists, any of that, they don’t go into the classrooms?
ALVINO: No, not that I know of.
WHISNANT: If you go into the classrooms, you go—
ALVINO: Yeah. I actually—the only outreach, um, that has been done is here in terms of school. I did it. I did it. I went to my, um, my son’s gifted class, um, because the teacher wanted, you know, she wanted to—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: —parks come over and I said, well maybe I can get somebody to, you know, dress up as a conquistador and come and talk. But it couldn’t be done. So I said, well—
WHISNANT: It couldn’t be done because they wouldn’t do it here?
ALVINO: Yeah. People—I don’t know.
WHISNANT: When the living history thing is going on—
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: —during the season, are they so engaged here all day that they really could not get away and go to the schools? Is that—
ALVINO: There’s so many volunteers that I think that somebody could definitely—
WHISNANT: Somebody could go.
ALVINO: Yeah. Somebody could go. Somebody could go. I mean, it’s not like an everyday thing. But there are times that you have like four people in camp and there’s not that many visitors.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You know.
WHISNANT: It’s surprising to me they haven’t thought of that because kids would love it.
ALVINO: Love it, yes. Yes. I ended up going and teaching something that I did at Everglades because I don’t want anything—you know—
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: But I had my—my props, I did—I ended up doing, um, the sea turtle power point presentation, which was the story of the sea turtle.
WHISNANT: Right. ALVINO: And then I had a game, which I developed, and I painted, and I worked hard on it. I was in Everglades, and I called them up and I said, can I order that game? So they mailed it to me, and I was able to do that with the kids and—and the kids learned that there is a park down here. So a lot of them would, you know, come afterwards with their parents. Um, they did a whole, you know, thank you card.
WHISNANT: Mm-hmm.
ALVINO: And they learned, they learned that, you know, that sea turtles are endangered, that it’s—they know to be careful around the beach. You know, and—and that’s how you start.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: You start when they’re little.
WHISNANT: Having been here this week and seeing all these school buses coming in, I guess I assumed that people from the park were going into schools.
ALVINO: No.
WHISNANT: But that’s really not—
ALVINO: No. No, what is happening is that there is some sort of, I don’t know how it started but, um, there is, uh, I guess it’s a partnership, um, with the county. These two gentlemen bring fifth graders out here.
WHISNANT: Uh-huh.
ALVINO: And it’s more of an environmental—
WHISNANT: Yeah. Yeah. They were on the BC the day we took our little beach walk.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Yeah. And they—they do more of a—an environmental education, not De Soto education.
WHISNANT: There is no systematic effort to go into the schools?
ALVINO: No, not from the park. No, they come—they go to the schools, they bring the kids here. They do their thing here. They have lunch and then they leave.
WHISNANT: Okay.
ALVINO: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
WHISNANT: All right.
ALVINO: Yeah, so it’s a shame.
WHISNANT: Yeah. Well, this has been very helpful in—in all kinds of ways.
ALVINO: Yeah.
WHISNANT: And, um—
ALVINO: And—and I guess, you know, it—it depends from season to season, um, I mean, I did that. I took time to do that. Um, but the fact that, um, I guess maybe—a superintendent, um, we are stretched thin.
WHISNANT: Right.
ALVINO: We are stretched thin.
WHISNANT: Right. Well, I’m just, confidentially, and if you don’t want to say, just tell me you don’t want to say.
ALVINO: Okay.
WHISNANT: Um, are you candidate for the superintendence here?
ALVINO: No. No.
WHISNANT: You wouldn’t be eligible to do that?
ALVINO: No, I’m not. No. I’m not eligible because I’m a GS-9. And a superintendent’s position is a 12.
WHISNANT: A 12.
ALVINO: A 12.
WHISNANT: Yeah.
ALVINO: Yeah. So that’s, you know, how we need to—[audio recording ends]
END OF INTERVIEW
Description
During this interview, Angie Alvino speaks about her career path with NPS and how she moved from a volunteer position in 1993 at San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico to acting superintendent of De Soto National Memorial in Florida in 2006. Alvino examines the cultural differences she noticed between Puerto Rico and Florida, how she adapted to these differences, and how she views her role within the broader NPS. Interviewed by David Whisnant on May 9, 2006.
Credit
De Soto National Memorial
Date Created
05/09/2006
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