Oral History Interview with Cliff Kevill

Transcript

Transcript

Abstract: With De Soto National Memorial being a small park, the chief ranger understandably takes on several roles. As a chief ranger, Cliff Kevill was the perfect fit for the position, having prior experience in law enforcement, interpretation, and resource management. In this interview, Kevill discusses his winding path throughout his career at NPS, starting as a seasonal employee and moving from park to park every six months from 1983 to 1986. In 1986, Kevill got his first permanent NPS position at Fort Frederica. As a seasonal employee, he gained a wide range of skills that earned him his permanent position at the memorial. Having started at De Soto around 2006, Kevill remarked that while it is a small park, park employees do all the same things as a large park, and because of that, everyone on the staff works together to achieve park goals. Kevill also stated that baseline information about the flora and fauna species living in the park must be collected, and a natural resource bibliography (NRBIB) should be assembled, emphasizing the importance of resource management. Lastly, he comments on the frustration he experiences in finding a balance between what is best for the environment best for the park and setting the historical scene to tell the story of the De Soto exploration.

DAVID WHISNANT: Okay. This is an interview with Cliff Kevill. Is that the way you say it?

CLIFF KEVILL: Right.

WHISNANT: Uh, at De Soto National Memorial on May the 9th, 2006. Cliff is chief ranger with the park, and he has only been here for five months. So, uh, this is going to be a kind of fresh perspective on—on, uh—on the memorial. Um, Cliff, can you start just by saying what year you were born and briefly recounting your experience prior to the park? Because I'm interested in kind of where people came from and what—how this fits into their career with the park service.

KEVILL: Okay. Um, I was born in 1951, um, Portsmouth, Virginia. Um, I began my park service career actually in 1983 as a seasonal at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Um, I worked there—

WHISNANT: So, you were already 32—

KEVILL: Correct. Yeah, um—correct.

WHISNANT: —when you started. So, what did you do—

KEVILL: Okay. I—

WHISNANT: Just briefly what you did before.

KEVILL: Um, I went to East Carolina—well, I was raised in Alexandria, Virginia outside of Washington, DC. Went to East Carolina University, uh, in Greenville, North Carolina.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: Graduated from there in 1974 with a—

WHISNANT: In?

KEVILL: —degree in sociology and a minor in anthropology.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Um, and, uh, from—after the, uh—after graduating, I worked at a natural science center in Atlanta, Georgia for about six years.

WHISNANT: And is that the kind of thing you sort of thought you were heading to?

KEVILL: Well, not necessarily. What—what I really wanted to be was a probation officer. Uh, yeah. When—when I went to school, that was—that was my idea, was to be a probation officer. And I actually did, uh, an internship working for about six months with, uh—I had a couple of cases of, uh—of kids in juvenile, uh, probation in the Greenville, North Carolina area.

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: Um, however, uh, this—in the 19—late 1960s, 1970s, everybody was graduating with a degree in sociology and also during that time, I had developed a great interest in—in the outdoors while I was at East Carolina. They developed a parks and recreation in 1972. By that time, I had already been in school for over two years.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and so, uh, I—I didn't get into that program.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Uh, if I went back again, I probably would have.

WHISNANT: And the—everybody majoring in sociology was sort of spillover from the '60s?

KEVILL: I think so.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: I think so. There—there's a great interest in social wellbeing, social work—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —that—that sort of thing.

WHISNANT: Did you come from a family that had that interest or—

KEVILL: Not really. My father worked for IBM for 30 years. My—my sister was an English teacher, uh, still is. Um, and so there really hadn't been that—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —great interest or anything.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: I think it was just being in college at that era—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —you know, more than anything else.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: And, um, so I graduated in 1974. I worked at a natural science center, uh, in—in Atlanta, Georgia. The Chattahoochee Nature Center—

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: —for about six years, um, teaching environmental education, uh, doing wildlife rehabilitation, uh, with all kind of hawks and mammals. All—all kinds of animals. Um—

WHISNANT: Is that outside of Atlanta?

KEVILL: It—it's in Roswell—

WHISNANT: I went to Georgia Tech—

KEVILL: It's in Roswell, Georgia.

WHISNANT: —but that was years before that. So—

KEVILL: It's in Roswell, Georgia—

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: -right along the Chattahoochee River. That is just about the time the Chattahoochee River was being designated as a national park or national recreation area. Uh, Jimmy Carter was president at that time, and he signed it into—into law, being from Georgia. And so I had—I had actually attempted to, uh, get a seasonal job in the—in the Smoky Mountain National Park back in the mid'70s, shortly after graduating from college. And I—I didn't get a job. I tried two different seasons because I had very little experience and no college education, uh, with outdoor recreation or natural resources or cultural resources or anything. But through my experience at the—at the nature center, I think that that's how I was given my first job as a seasonal in Shenandoah.

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: Um, and so I worked there, uh, from May through October of—I guess it was 1983. Um, I ended up working for about three years as a seasonal employee in different parks.

WHISNANT: How do—how do you manage that financially? Did you have a family then?

KEVILL: No. No.

WHISNANT: I mean, you—so you just basically had to quit your job—

KEVILL: Oh, yeah.

WHISNANT: —and you go and be a seasonal and then you have to piece it together to the next season?

KEVILL: Yeah. Um, for the—for the most part, that's the way the seasonal work is. You're like migrant workers. You go—

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: —you go where the work is. And—and so, um, I would work six months at one park and then in the winter I'd work six months in another park. Um, for the most part, I was able to remain employed with—with the park service as a seasonal employee for—for three years. Um, I—I worked at, uh—seasonally at, uh, Smoky Mountain National Park for—for two years, uh, in interpretation. Worked at [inaudible] National Seashore, uh, in—in law enforcement. Um, I worked a winter at Cape Hatteras, uh, at Wright Brothers and Bodie Island. And so I managed to—like all—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —seasonal employees do. I mean, there are seasonal employees in the park service who are career seasonals. That's what they do. They never get a permanent job. It's very difficult to get permanent employment, uh, in the park service. I actually got in through the back door by going with the Corps of Engineers. Um, I—I got my first permanent job with the Corps of Engineers at Lake Hartwell. That was—

WHISNANT: Oh, that's near, uh, Anderson—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —South Carolina.

KEVILL: In fact, I lived in Anderson.

WHISNANT: My father lived in Anderson for years, so—

KEVILL: Really? Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Yeah. Now, this would've been 1986.

WHISNANT: And my brother lives in Greenville, South Carolina.

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah, that's a very nice area. Yeah, I lived in Anderson, worked at Lake Hartwell, and, uh—and—

WHISNANT: And what did you do? Do you interpretation kind of stuff?

KEVILL: Well, you—you—

WHISNANT: I didn't know they had any.

KEVILL: They do. Um, you do dam tours, as we called them.

WHISNANT: Oh, okay.

KEVILL: —and then actually, that's what they were. They were tours of the dam—

WHISNANT: So, you can go in and see the—

KEVILL: You—you can—

WHISNANT: —see the generators and that kind of stuff?

KEVILL: Oh, yeah. Yeah. People can walk all through the dam, uh, on top of the dam, but they have to be with an escorted tour.

WHISNANT: But, you know, I took a—we took our kids to Fontana since 9/11, and that's closed.

KEVILL: I would say so.

WHISNANT: I mean, I—I went through Fontana as a child.

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

WHISNANT: But I don't think you can do that now.

KEVILL: I don't think you can. I doubt seriously that you can. And you probably can't go through Hartwell anymore, either. So, it could be some of those park ranger jobs are by the wayside.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But—but actually, the—the job was not so much interpretation, it was a park ranger position. However, um, in addition to interpretation, what you mostly did was what you call lakeshore management. And lakeshore management is managing the docks, uh, and—and everyone who builds a dock on Hartwell Lake and other Corps of Engineer lakes has to have a permit. So you have to draw up the plans and then once every two or three years you have to go and inspect every dock that's out there—

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: —and make sure that it's still safe. So—

WHISNANT: And on a lake that size.

KEVILL: Yeah. And—and so you—we probably had ten different park rangers and—and that's what we did day in and day out, you did lakeshore management.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And then on weekends you did the, uh, dam tours.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Uh, a couple of times a day. And—and so that's pretty much what—what that was. And—and this was a way that a lot of people in the park service got into federal employment. Once you're a permanent employee in the federal government, you could then apply more easily for—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —permanent jobs in the park service.

WHISNANT: Do you—do you happen to remember how many megawatts that dam was?

KEVILL: No. No, I don't.

WHISNANT: It's been too long.

KEVILL: I absolutely don't. You know, it's been 20 years.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: And so no, I—I—

WHISNANT: So, you went from the—you went from the Corps of Engineers—

KEVILL: Right. Yeah.

WHISNANT: —to the park service?

KEVILL: Correct. Yeah. Um, I—I got my first permanent job in the park service at Fort Frederica and that would—

WHISNANT: Which is?

KEVILL: In—in, uh, Brunswick—St. Simons Island.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Right across from Brunswick, Georgia. And that would've been late 1986. I was only at the Corps of Engineers for six months because once you're there, I think it's 30 days or something, you then have career conditional status, and you can apply for permanent jobs in the park service or other agencies. And once you are able to do that, it's much easier to get in. Um, and with the seasonal experience that I had, I was—I—I—it was fairly simple for me to get a permanent job once I was eligible. Um, I stayed at Fort—and the job at Fort Frederica was an interpretive park ranger job. Uh, however, while I was there, um, at Fort Frederica, you are right across the river from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick.

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: You're—you're literally five, ten miles from it. Um, I had—going back a little bit, I had a seasonal law enforcement commission, uh, which I got in 1984, I guess. 1984, 1985. With a seasonal commission, you get that on your own. You have to pay for it and you have to go to school. Um, there are several colleges around the country that you go for—I believe it's nine weeks. Once you graduate from that, you're then eligible for a seasonal law enforcement job. And I did have one seasonal law enforcement job at Cumberland Island. That was—that was law enforcement. Um, so when I went to Fort Frederica, even though it was an interpretive job, because they really didn't have a law enforcement ranger, I had a seasonal, which is a level two commission, while there. FLETC, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, called our superintendent one day and—and said that, uh, they had an opening, somebody had dropped out, the—the course was starting next week, was there anybody there that they want to send?

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: And literally—usually you have to wait two years to get into FLETC—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —you have to apply for it. It was like—yeah. And I went. And so, I got my permanent law enforcement commission, which then the park service pays for all that. You know, you're being paid to go to school. And, uh, so that would've been 1987. And so, when I got out of there at—at Fort Frederica, I was a law enforcement and interpretation. In 1988, I got a job—a law enforcement position at Chickamauga Chattanooga National Military Park in—

WHISNANT: You've been some nice places.

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah. And—and actually, I worked on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. There's two different units of Chickamauga, and I was on the Lookout Mountain unit. Um, and so there I was a law enforcement ranger. Did very little interpretation. I worked the visitors' center desk sometimes, but not that much. Um, I was there for three years and, uh, applied for a job at the Blue Ridge Parkway and—in a law enforcement/interpretive position. On the Parkway at that time, you, uh, they didn't have a division of law enforcement and interpretation. They—you did everything. And so, um, I applied for that position and—and that's really the sort of thing I'm interested in. I've—I've always been more of a generalist. I—I like to do resource management, interpretation, law enforcement. I'm not interested just in doing law enforcement, for instance.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But it is an interest of mine. And so, um, I went to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Worked in the, uh, Pisgah District.

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: That's what they called it at that time. I'm not sure what it is now. And, uh, lived at Soco Gap and worked at Balsam Gap. Worked—worked out of the Balsam Gap. WHISNANT: I told you my father worked at American Enka and I grew up in the village there? KEVILL: Yeah. You—you—yeah, you mentioned that. WHISNANT: Yeah. KEVILL: That—that's right. Yeah. And, uh, so I—I worked there from, uh, early in 1991 until the end of 1993 at, uh, Chickamauga. So three years roughly. And then, uh, went to Fort Pulaski in a law enforcement, interpretation, resource management position. A generalist position. And, um, that—that's in, uh, Savana, Georgia.

WHISNANT: Where Charlie is now?

KEVILL: Yes. Um, and I stayed there for 12 years.

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: Yeah. Which is—for me, it was a long time. I'd never been anywhere longer than three years before that. Um, while I was there, they, um, created what's called ranger careers, which is where they specialize different divisions and—and everyone basically became a GS-9, which before, you had to apply for 5, 7, 9 positions. Now, they created a position where when you got in you were—there was a ladder, 5, 7, 9, and so everyone was at the 9 level and it was very difficult to get promoted to the next level of GS-11. And so, I—I started applying probably, um, after I'd been there six years or so. Um, and took me about six years to get that next level, which I got when I came here, uh, which was in November of 2005. Uh, and—and this position is—it's a position that really fits me in that it is a generalist position. Um, they did want somebody with a commission, however, it's—it's more an interpretive management sort of position and natural resource secondary. Uh, but they—the two chief rangers before me had not had law enforcement commissions.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Uh, the last one was Brian Loadholtz, which was, uh, I believe he left in about 2000, year 2000. Um, but they've had some recent incidents here with arson, the, uh—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —the living history camp, uh, has been burned three different occasions—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —in the last five years. So Charlie, when he re-announced the position and was hiring a chief ranger, decided he wanted someone not only interpretive experience, but with a law enforcement commission. So, um, I applied for the position and—and got it and been here since November.

WHISNANT: Were you moving a family around—

KEVILL: No. No. I'm—I'm single.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Well, I say I'm single. I—I was—I had been married, but I don't have children. Um, yeah. I—I was married, uh, when I was on the, uh, Blue Ridge Parkway until—through Fort Pulaski.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: But I was divorced during that time.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: So, both you and—and, um, Dick Hart were—no—

KEVILL: Dick Hite?

WHISNANT: Dick Hite.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: I—I thought that sounded wrong—

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

WHISNANT: —but I couldn't think why it was wrong.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Y'all were both at the Blue Ridge Parkway for a couple of years at very different times.

KEVILL: Yeah, I guess so. I—I didn't—

WHISNANT: He was—

KEVILL: I don't even know if I knew he was there.

WHISNANT: He was there for a couple of years in the '60s.

KEVILL: Oh, okay. Do you know where he was? I'm not even—

WHISNANT: He was at Bent Creek.

KEVILL: Okay. Um—yeah. Um, he may have mentioned it to me. I've spoken with him—

WHISNANT: I mean, he—he lived at Bent Creek and he worked in that section of the Parkway. I don't know exactly—

KEVILL: Okay. He—he may have mentioned it to me. I—I have not met him. I've spoken with him one time.

WHISNANT: He's a wonderful guy.

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah. He's—he's full of information.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: And, uh, I did call him one time, uh, just to, you know, tell him I was here and if there's anything I could do for him and—and also let him know that you folks were coming and might want to talk to him.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Yeah.

KEVILL: And so, he could've mentioned that to me because I do remember Bent Creek. Bent Creek is—is not park service, that's—it's National Forest Service—

WHISNANT: No. Right. Right.

KEVILL: —and it could be at that time it was, too.

WHISNANT: No. Well, he wasn't stationed there. He lived there.

KEVILL: He just lived down there.

WHISNANT: But he worked on the Parkway.

KEVILL: Right. So, he worked out of the Asheville—

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: —east of Pisgah or whatever.

WHISNANT: Yeah. But that's where you knew Phil; right? Phil—

KEVILL: Phil Noblett?

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Well, yeah. I—I had known Phil Noblett, actually, before that just through training courses.

WHISNANT: Oh.

KEVILL: He—he had been the chief ranger at Fort Frederica. Phil Noblett had been.

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: Uh, about two years prior to my arriving there.

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: So, you know, I—I had known Phil just through the grapevine, through networking, training and—and the fact that we had that connection. I talked to him about Fort Frederica.

WHISNANT: I think he was also at Chickamauga when he first began.

KEVILL: I think—I think—

WHISNANT: It might be—might be seasonal or something like that.

KEVILL: I think so. But I really got to know Phil more when I was on the Parkway.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: He—we worked out of the Asheville, uh, office there.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Headquarters.

WHISNANT: So—I mean, one thing I'm kind of coming to understand talking with various people, I mean—and I wasn't unfamiliar with the park service, because Anne's work on her book, you know, she's been working on that for 15 years—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —and she's been all over the park service and, you know, interviewed a gazillion people and we—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —read park service documents, you know, forever.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: So, it's—it's not—it's not unfamiliar to us. But—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: But it—it's very clear that—that people have this sort—and have to—

KEVILL: Uh-huh

WHISNANT: —have this sort of strategic thing about being in the park service.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: You—you've got to make these moves. I mean, to progress in the park service— KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —means to move; right? I mean, you really can't—

KEVILL: Yeah. In—in most cases, that's true. I mean, there are people who do get promoted from within the same park. Um, but that's very rare. And—and for me, um, it wasn't just a matter of being promoted, I wasn't necessarily promoted every time I moved, like, uh, even as a permanent employee, I did take some lateral assignments. Um, when I left Chickamauga to go the Blue Ridge Parkway, I was a GS-7 and—and—at both places.

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: But I think that it was—especially seasonally, it's as much to get experience and everything—

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: —both to help you on a résumé in the future, but also most people get into the park service because we like that adventure, that travel, seeing different parks.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and I tell you, your—your best days are when you're a seasonal employee, you know, when—once—

WHISNANT: Oh.

KEVILL: —you become permanent, the, uh—the world changes.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: And—and so everybody looks back to those seasonal days. And so it's not just a matter of being promoted, it's a matter of—you know, you look back at why you got into the park service. And—and—and I was fortunate enough, uh, I guess that I didn't have kids, which when—when you have children, it makes it more difficult to move—

WHISNANT: Oh, my goodness.

KEVILL: —at that salary level.

WHISNANT: I can't imagine it.

KEVILL: Yeah. You can't—but there are—there are people that do it.

WHISNANT: Angie told me that she moved from Puerto Rico to Everglades—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —with three little children.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: And she was—she was by herself. She didn't have somebody to help her with it.

KEVILL: Yes.

WHISNANT: And that is just—

KEVILL: Yeah. It's mind blowing.

WHISNANT: Just to imagine that.

KEVILL: You've got to make a sacrifice.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and—and most people, you know, it's a commitment that they make on the count of the park service. They're interested in that—that agency, they're interested in the lifestyle and—and you're willing to—to make the sacrifice, I guess. You've also got to be patient and you've got to be persistent.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: A lot of people, you know, drop out of the seasonal ranks and never get a permanent job just because either they can't wait because they need the money or—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —you know, or they're not willing to. You—you know—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —nothing's guaranteed—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —as—as a seasonal employee.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: And—and so, uh, a lot of people choose not to do it. But if—if you're patient ant persistent, eventually, you will get in somewhere sometime.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Let me ask you about your coming here, then.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Uh, um, when I was talking to Jay the other day, he—he used the term stair step park.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: This is a kind of stair step park. And he—he made the argument to me that—that De Soto is—is a—is in a way—maybe not ever intentionally designed that way, but it's kind of come to be that way—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —uh, a sort of training park. You know, people can come in here as superintendent at GS-11 or 12—

KEVILL: Right.

WHISNANT: —whereas you'd have to be 13 or 14 or whatever—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —at a big park.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: And that may be true, I mean, I don't know whether that's true for chief rangers or not.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: But—but do you think of this as kind of—for you as a—

KEVILL: Well, I mean, well in—in my career, you know, I've only got seven years to retirement.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And—and so, um, it—it—I may be here the rest of my career. I may not even go to another place from here.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: However, you know, um, with the superintendent it's different because the superintendent here—I'm a GS-11, the superintendent's a GS-12.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: There's only three GS-12s in the southeast region.

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: So, anyone who's an 11—

WHISNANT: You mean GS-12—

KEVILL: GS-12 superintendents, sorry.

WHISNANT: Superintendents.

KEVILL: GS-12 superintendents.

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: There are GS-12s in other areas, specialties or whatever. But as a superintendent—so what that means is any—in order to be a GS-13, you have to be a 12. You can't skip that —

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: —grade.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And—and so you somehow have to get to that level. Now, you can be a GS-12 chief ranger some places and then apply for a superintendency, but—so there's—there's all these GS-11s out there—

WHISNANT: So, GS-12s would be at Everglades, Blue Ridge Parkway—

KEVILL: No. No. It's—now, you're talking about as far as superintendents?

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: No.

WHISNANT: They would be higher than that. You're talking about chief rangers? KEVILL: No. GS-12 superintendents. There's only three superintendents that are GS-12s in the southeast region.

WHISNANT: Blue Ridge Parkway.

KEVILL: That's—that's—no.

WHISNANT: No?

KEVILL: No. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a—a—way beyond that.

WHISNANT: Oh, way beyond that?

KEVILL: Yeah. Much higher.

WHISNANT: Oh, I see.

KEVILL: We're—we're talking about—not higher than a GS-12, we're talking about a GS-12.

WHISNANT: Oh, as an entry level—

KEVILL: As an entry—yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Um, De Soto, Horseshoe Bend, and Moores Creek. Those are the only superintendencies in the southeast region that are GS-12. All the other ones are higher. Much higher. In some cases, Everglades is not even in the GS series. It's—it's beyond a GS-15.

WHISNANT: Oh, okay.

KEVILL: So—so in—so that's why Jay, when he's talking about the, uh, training ground for superintendents, you can almost be assured that any superintendent that comes here has never been a superintendent before.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh. Uh-huh

KEVILL: Because there's—

WHISNANT: There's nowhere for them to be superintendent.

KEVILL: There's nowhere for them to be. Now, as—as far as chief rangers, um, it—it's different when you think about a chief ranger because a lot of people when they think about the chief ranger, they think about law enforcement.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Okay? Like in the Smokies, their chief ranger is a law enforcement person period.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Um, and they're probably a GS-12 or they're 13. Law enforcement, they don't have interpretation or anything because that park's departmentalized—there's only about probably ten parks like this one where you—the chief ranger's over interpretation, resource management, and law enforcement. So, it's a little more difficult to compare that—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —because it's not the same—

WHISNANT: It's apples and oranges.

KEVILL: Yeah. And—and so I would—I would have to say, though, that there's not that many people who are necessarily qualified to be chief ranger in this park, for instance, as compared to a law enforcement park because you've got to have law enforcement, interpretation, resource management background. You know—

WHISNANT: And you had exactly those.

KEVILL: Yeah. And—and so—and I'm interested in a small park, which is what this is, because you do all those things.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: I'm not interested in going to the Everglades where you just do law enforcement or just do interpretation.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and so I—I would say this, though, as far as, um, you know, the training part is that probably any chief ranger here would not have been a chief ranger anywhere else—

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: —before. Um, so that's true, whereas from here, I—you know, I could apply for GS-12 chief rangers or whatever and—and so in order to do that, you will had to have had chief ranger experience to get one as a GS-12.

WHISNANT: And you said you're a GS-11?

KEVILL: 11.

WHISNANT: 11.

KEVILL: GS-11. Yeah. So this is the first time I've—I've been a GS-11. Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think I've kind of got the—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —the thing about your career and the moves and the structure and that kind of thing. So—so you came here from—

KEVILL: Fort Pulaski.

WHISNANT: Fort Pulaski. And that's a very different situation from this. It's a very different park. A very different basis for the park.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: So, I'd be interested in—in your—talking a little bit, uh, about sort of how you perceive the—the mission of the park and the sort of character of the park—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —uh, compared to what you had done—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —the last time.

KEVILL: Well, Fort Pulaski is a national monument as compared to De Soto, which is a national memorial.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And so right there you've got a major difference. You know, a monument is where you've got an actual structure.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: You've got something that that is a historical site.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: What happened there is of historical significance.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: Whereas a memorial at De Soto is a different management scheme because there's nothing that happened right here—

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: —unless De Soto did land here, but we don't know.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: Of national significance, but we're memorializing what happened in this area.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and so right there, you know, you're not protecting that resource, which is—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —very significant and such.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: And so I think that that's one major difference and—and we are kind of the beginning of what is a much bigger story as far as the expedition, which then took, you know, four years and—and covered the southeastern United States. So we are part of a much bigger picture.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, now, that can be said true of—of civil war battlefield too because you're—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —you're part of a bigger scheme there—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —as far as the battle plans and whatever. But there was a stopping and starting point there at Fort Pulaski whereas here, this is just a starting point. So as far as the management of—of the—and the mission, um, there is a great difference in—in the mission there.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, now, as far as the—the perspective of the park and the character of the park, that's where I think—I think the biggest change for me is that here, we have adjacent park neighbors and this is very much a local park as compared—a lot of these people do not even realize that in their back yard, they've got a national park. They come here every day—

WHISNANT: Somebody else I talked to referred to this as a dog park.

KEVILL: Yes. Yes.

WHISNANT: You know, it's like—

KEVILL: Well, Dog Soto is what that person probably—

WHISNANT: Dog—

KEVILL: Dog Soto, yeah. Not De Soto, Dog Soto. Yeah. And—and—and I would say in the course of a day, we may get 50 dogs. You know—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —with owners, for the most part.

WHISNANT: Right. Right. Right. Right.

KEVILL: You know. Yeah. The dogs are walking their owners. But—but they—and they come every day. And so, they don't come here because of the—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —significance of the park.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: They appreciate the park.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: They love park.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But some of these people who love it don't even know that it is a national park.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And probably couldn't tell you why we're really here, you know?

WHISNANT: And couldn't care less if it's about De Soto or not.

KEVILL: Yeah. That's right. It's a greenspace that—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —they can come and of course, you know, it does—it does serve that purpose. So, I think for me coming and finding out that here we live in, you know, Bradenton, Florida where you've got a very transient population anyway, so that's one difference. A lot of those people may not know what's in their backyard regardless because they haven't been here that long. But a lot of people who are in Bradenton, which is right here where we are, don't realize, first of all, that we're here, second of all, even if they do know we're here, they don't know it's a national park site. They get us confused with Fort De Soto, which is across the way.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But that's not a national park site, either.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But—but anyway, it's—I—I think that was the thing and—and the issues that it brings, the—the visitor doesn't come here with that attitude of a visitor who if it was a destination park and they—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —may be familiar with national parks.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Some of these people have never been to a national park.

WHISNANT: So—so a—a main—necessarily a main mission of this park, whether it's stated or not, has to be to define itself to the public.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: And it's not like the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's not like—

KEVILL: Correct.

WHISNANT: —Fort Pulaski or whatever.

KEVILL: Correct. Yeah. People don't come here for that reason and they don't come here understanding that it is even a national park and everything. So, I think it—it's much more difficult. And I think also, though, it leads—lends itself to whatever the managers think at that time, whatever their interest is, they can take that, and they can move it in a certain direction. Such as the last superintendent got very interested in this De Soto trail, which we are really the beginning of that trail—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —and—and so his main thrust is to try to encourage the—the whole big story. Uh, other superintendents have more or less just focused on this site here. And—and so they're all serving a purpose, you know, we—uh, but I think that there is a great ability here for people to use whatever their interest is and—and make that the mission. It—it's kind of a gray area here, you know, it's—it's not a fixed mission, protect this site, period.

WHISNANT: Right. Right. Right. I—I wanted—are you involved in the living history stuff?

KEVILL: Somewhat. Um, I—I supervise it and I've done living history in other parks. Um, it has—

WHISNANT: Have you been—

KEVILL: In—in this park, the only thing that I've done—when I first started, within two keeps, they did the living history training for the seasonals and I went through the black powder course, uh, that they do here. Two day course to get certified in black powder for the park just in case I need—well, for—for one, I need to know—

WHISNANT: Right. What they do.

KEVILL: — [inaudible] okay? And—and so I went through that.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Um, but I never actually partook in the day-to-day activities of the living history camp.

WHISNANT: You don't dress up in costume and—

KEVILL: No. I—I did that one time and that was near the beginning of the opening of the camp, but—but other than that, I—I don't do that.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: And that—that's not to say that I couldn't and in the future if—if needed, I—I could do that. But—but in my position, that really isn't day to day as long as you've got other people who are doing that, that's—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —that's really not what—what I'm doing.

WHISNANT: Right. Let me sort of tell you where I'm coming from about living history.

KEVILL: Okay. Okay.

WHISNANT: Um, as—as I've said, Anne has done—been working on this book on the Parkway for years and—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: And, um, there—I don't know if you know, the, um, Peaks of Otter—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah. It's—that's in Virginia, not North Carolina.

KEVILL: Yeah. Right.

WHISNANT: But that's a—[inaudible] main—main site.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: And the Johnson Farm that's there is a site where they did—I don't think they do now, but they did a good bit of living history at a certain point.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: When living history kind of got to be the thing in the park service—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —I think in the '70s.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Um, and what they did up there was not very good and—and in the process of working on the chapter on that, Anne read a lot about living history and she wrote some about it and I—since I read everything she writes, I read that and, you know—so we kind of—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —are aware of both the pros and the cons about living history.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: And so, when we found out that we were going to do this study of this park, uh, I went on the web and looked to see what the—you know, what was going on. And we saw, first of all, of course, De Soto and I thought, oh, my God, this is a park about De Soto.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: And then the second thing was a lot of living history. And I thought, oh, my God, a living history.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: So, I—I wasn't terribly positively disposed toward it. But since I've been down here, you know, I've seen that number one, they're very serious about it.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Number two, they try really hard to do a good job that a lot of people have thought and read and worked on it for years and that's good.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Um, it also has come to seem to me that, um, you know, if you're at De Soto and you don't do living history, what do you do?

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: You know, you don't have a 469 mile parkway.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: You don't have, you know, a million and a half Everglades acres.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: You got 25 acres surrounded by subdivisions.

KEVILL: Uh-huh

WHISNANT: And no major archeological stuff. No structure. No nothing.

KEVILL: Uh-huh

WHISNANT: So, if you don't do that, what do you do?

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: It—

KEVILL: Yeah. Just—yeah. Um, let me speak, first of all, on the living history program just real quick. And—and I know that's probably not what you want from me, but, um, in the short time I've been here, I am very impressed with their living history program. I think it is a direct reflection of not just the management, but the person that right now we have who's over the—the living history program, and that's someone you haven't met I don't think.

WHISNANT: Jim Garnet.

KEVILL: Jim Garnet.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Um, and, uh, I—I wish you could have been here just to see the camp—

WHISNANT: I wish I could have.

KEVILL: —and maybe you—you'll—you'll be—

WHISNANT: I never [inaudible]— KEVILL: —you'll almost be finished, but you know, but I mean, we're talking about the middle of next—next December before they do it again.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But I think that the living history camp here really defines De Soto National Memorial. That's what the visitor comes here to expect. But also, it does separate us, um, from other parks and—and I think as far as people coming here and the experience that they have, it's about that living history camp for the most part. Um, it's done in a very authentic way, as best I can gather. Now, that being said, I—I admit, I'm not a Spanish historian.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And there's very few, by the way. And—and, you know, that's the thing. Civil War reenactors, you know, they're a dime a dozen.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: They're everywhere. And—and of course, there are better ones than others.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: More authentic. But—but as far as the Spanish story, um, there's not that many out there. But what—from what I can gather, the people here are very serious about getting it right. And we've got the Calderon's Company, which is the group of reenactors, and—and they also make sure that we do it right. Not that we're not doing it and trying to. But—but at any rate, I think that the program here is—is a very good one. Um, and I think you'd—you'd be impressed with what goes on there. Now, that's only four months of the year.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So, eight months of the year, you know, we're not doing living history.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Okay. The only way we can do the living history program is to hire seasonal employees.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And this year, we had two additional people who aren't even here now. If you'd been here three weeks ago, they would've been. Uh, we had a seasonal and we had, uh, Jim Garnet, who's a term employee. And so, to make that camp function with two employees a day, you have to have more people on your staff. So now, we're back to the bare bones staff, which, uh, in—and I guess your question is more in the ranger division. What it is that—

WHISNANT: Yeah. Kind—kind of how you—you know, how you see it. You've said that you think they do a good job, and they work really hard at it.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Um, just kind of how you see that fitting into the park program and, you know—

KEVILL: Yeah. Um, so you've got eight months of the year where we are not doing the living history program. Um, and we supplement that with like doing the video—the movie that we've got here, which is shown about every half hour. It's a 20 minute movie. And so people are getting the De Soto story from that and they're getting it from the brochure and the wayside exhibits and that sort of thing. Um, one thing that I'm trying to do—when I got here in the middle of November, which was about a month before the camp started, I was amazed that there was no other interpretation actually being done.

WHISNANT: Right. KEVILL: Okay? Um, and so the—well, another thing that I haven't seen fully is the visitation that we have in the summer. And I know it slows down dramatically here. Our busy time is in the winter, which to me—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —is a flip flop.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: I'm used to the winter being the slow time.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, we've been through that busy winter season.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: The—the summer season is when they tell me it's—it's—there's not that many people down here other than local people walking their dogs and it's very hot.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, the—the—there's no reason to have the camp manned and what I've tried to do though, and this just started last week, is have trail walks here.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: We've got a very nice 80—uh, 80 percent of the park is mangroves, and just to keep people out and to offer something. And so, um, every day that we have two staff members here, we at 11 o'clock offer a trail walk now. So that's something we've just done. They've done it sporadically in the past, but I'm—I'm going to try to see if it will work. It may not.

WHISNANT: Are you going to try to do it today?

KEVILL: Um, no. Um, because Jay is off site.

WHISNANT: Oh. So, you're not going to do it today?

KEVILL: It—it—no. It—it takes—it takes—okay. When we have somebody in the visitors' center, they have to be at the visitors' center desk or around the visitors' center, okay? The only time that we can—with the staff that we have got—offer a trail walk is when we have two people who are in the building. So, if Jay today did not have a meeting which he's off site, either he or Diana would be scheduled for a trail walk. Um, that works about three days a week where we have enough staff that we can do that, okay? And we try to do it on weekends and then one or two days during the week. Um—

WHISNANT: And do you usually have a good number of people who go?

KEVILL: Well, again, we just started it last week.

WHISNANT: So, you don't know.

KEVILL: So so far, it has only gone one time.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And that time, they had three people.

WHISNANT: Huh. KEVILL: The other times—well, first of all, there's—you've got to have a certain number of people in the park. Second of all, they've got to want to go on a trail walk.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and so, again, most of the people are walking the trail with their dogs, you know what I mean?

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But—and then the people that aren't, they come here just to quickly see what it is. They want the De Soto story for the most part. Now, the trail walk is not just a natural history walk. It can—it can be whatever you want to make it, and you can gear it to your audience. It can be a cultural history, natural history, or a combination of both. Um, we do have significant archeological resources here. Now, I say significant, they're not necessarily of national significance—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —but we've got Indian middens here—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —yet of course, they're—they're all over Florida.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But we do have an archeological site here to protect. That and the—and the Shaw House ruins out here also. Um—

WHISNANT: The Shaw House ruins? KEVILL: Yeah. The—the—

WHISNANT: The—the Tabby House?

KEVILL: The Tabby House.

WHISNANT: Tabby House. Okay.

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Tabby House is probably the politically correct way to call it now. Uh, in fact, this was called Shaw's Point.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And now it's called De Soto's point, because we found out that actually a lot of other people other than Shaw probably utilized the area, fisherman, slaves, slaveholders, cattleman, all that. So, yeah, thank you.

WHISNANT: [inaudible]

KEVILL: Yeah. But, uh—but actually, you'll see it written in a lot of places the Shaw House ruin, but it's the—the Tabby ruins now. But, um, we—there's so many things in any small park that go in—on just like in a large park. We have all the reports that have to be done, we have all the meetings that have to be done, um, but we do it with a lot less staff. So, it's, you know, people think that—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —that park rangers—well, if there's nobody here, what do you do?

WHISNANT: Right. KEVILL: Well, okay, the person who's in the visitors' center, we have volunteers for the most part that man the desk. But they're not—but they have to be around just in case there's a question or if they sell—have to sell a Golden Age Passport or something like that.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: There has to be a staff member. But they are busy constantly doing different things.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, get—just like for the past week, we've been helping you with the administrative history.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Now, that doesn't happen every week, but something does. There's always something.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Today, Jay is off site on a major project that we're working on, the De Soto Trail Project.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: He's—in his position, that's—that's one of his projects. For the camp period, for the living history winter period, he's had to put that aside. He really hasn't been able to work on it. So now, that's what he will work on almost constantly for the next eight months or so. And this is a project that'll go on for years probably.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, and—and so it's—it's not—people say, well, is it busy out there now, you know, when there's not—it really doesn't have a lot to do with visitors so much because in the off season, what we're doing is planning, we're writing the project statements to get funding, we're—we're doing all that sort of thing that you can't do during the busy season.

WHISNANT: Right. Right. Right. So, you're over all the interpretation; right? That's one of your three—

KEVILL: Correct.

WHISNANT: —areas of—of work?

KEVILL: Correct.

WHISNANT: Interpretation, law enforcement, and—

KEVILL: Resource management.

WHISNANT: —and resource management.

KEVILL: Cultural and natural resource management.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Um, I want to talk about all of those.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: But—but, um, the, um, the sort of educational part of it, the interpretation part of it—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: I've seen all the school buses coming in.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: I assumed that people from the park also go into the schools. But apparently that's really not the case.

KEVILL: We—we do rarely. And—and let me say the way—there's a lot of different ways that parks do school programs, and here, for a couple reasons, the way we do it is it's, for the most part, self guided. And that's for one, because of the staff that we have.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: During the camp season, groups come out and they can take advantage of the camp. We're doing it every day, seven days a week, all day long. They can do that.

WHISNANT: Wow.

KEVILL: That's taken care of.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Okay. And so, you don't have to plan anything for them. In the off season, we have—no, the camp isn't open, but we have limited staff, and so we don't—we don't offer to the schools come out and a ranger will lead you. Now, we will if they request it, give them an introduction talk, like here in the, uh, theater or even standing outside the visitors' center. But what we do in lieu of that is we have a teachers' training, a workshop in—in August, which is several days long, and I don't know if Jay spoke with you about this—

WHISNANT: No.

KEVILL: Okay. Have you interviewed Jay?

WHISNANT: Yes.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: But—but we didn't—I asked—

KEVILL: [inaudible] but—but so, um, Jay's position, um, is—he's really the person who more than not does interpretive programs and projects in—in his position. He assisted with leading this teachers' workshop. We do it in conjunction with a local vendor who actually does trips with the schools and the school—Manatee County School System pays this organization, it's called Around the Bend Nature Tours, Karen Fraley. She used to be a staff member here.

WHISNANT: Huh.

KEVILL: They developed a teachers' curriculum, and so the teachers come here, and they go through a two day course where they're given the curriculum and they discuss all these different, you know, interpretive themes and that sort of thing. And then they're able to lead their own tours out here for the most part.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Or the—the—sometimes, they can, uh—the school has contracted with Karen Fraley to lead these trips.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And so, this park is—is—is a little bit different than some that I've worked in. Although, that is really the thrust now is to develop environmental education and to take it into the schools and let them develop their own based on the training that they have here. We do off site programs occasionally also. Since I've been here, we've had two requests that—that we filled as far as going into the school system and actually do—

WHISNANT: Uh, with the—with the staff you have, you—you don't really have the—the power to do that.

KEVILL: We—we—we really can't do it. We—we certainly don't want to advertise that we do it.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And—and you know, when—when people make a request, we—we—we try to look at our staff and look at what their request is.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: We—we have to be careful not to set a precedent, because if we do it for this group, we—we have to do it for this one, too.

WHISNANT: And to go into one 50 minute class, it's probably going to take you two and a half hours or something like that.

KEVILL: Right. To—to get—to get everything together to do it, to drive there and —

WHISNANT: Get there, get back.

KEVILL: Yeah. And we really don't have the staffing to do it. Um

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —because again, we have to do everything in a small park that a—a larger park has to do and just with a much more limited staff.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Right. Let me talk to you about natural resource management for a minute.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: That's one of the things that we're supposed to talk about in the report. And I—I've been going through all these files and—and, um, in various files and documents and yesterday, I went through that two drawer little filing cabinet full of picture cards. I don't know if you've ever seen those or not.

KEVILL: No. You've probably seen more than I have.

WHISNANT: Uh, there's a—there's two five by eight file drawers—

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: —that have each got maybe 500 or 600 cards and each card has a small photograph, sometimes a designation for a negative number, and a little description of what it is.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: And these things go—actually go back to the late '40s.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Um, and some of the best historical stuff that I found here.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: And in there is a lot of stuff on—on natural resource issues, problems, beach erosion, the hurricanes—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —um, dock construction, beach replenishment, you know, I mean, they were starting that as early as 1961. Um, so I—I—and the other day when we took our walk through, um—

[INTERRUPTION]

WHISNANT: Yeah. Okay. This is the continuation of an interview with Cliff Kevill from, uh, May the 9th, 2006 that we got interrupted this morning on. Um, Cliff, I think the only thing that I had left that I wanted to talk to you about is this whole natural resources management thing. Um, I can't remember what I said this morning, but I think I said that in various of these files, I've seen photographs and references to docks and, you know, Emerson Point, and, you know, all of those sorts of things.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: So, I think I'm reasonably current up to, like, when you came.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: Of what—you know, what they've struggled with in the past and the kinds of issues they've had and so on. But I wanted to ask you just from your perception when you came here and now that you've been here five months, what do you think the major challenges still are? The major needs, um, what's likely to get done or not no matter how urgent it is?

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Just kind of how you—and you're faced now with trying to manage these natural resources and maintain them. So, I'd just like for you to talk to me about that.

KEVILL: Okay. Um, right now, park service wide, there's an inventory monitoring going on of natural resources. Um, it's—it's a part of the resource management challenge thrust, I don't know if you're familiar with that.

WHISNANT: I don't know that.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: And there's—is—there's presumably a web link or something to that on the—

KEVILL: There—there is. There is.

WHISNANT: It would be called what now specifically so I can—

KEVILL: Um, if—if—I could possibly find you that link, but it's the Inventory Monitoring Program—

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: —under that National Park Service.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: So, if you go to www.nps.gov—

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: —and look under the nature link—

WHISNANT: Nature link. Okay.

KEVILL: —I think it may be under nature or natural resources. There—there's a link like that—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —sign, something like that.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: It should take you to that.

WHISNANT: Okay.

KEVILL: But right now, this came out of a—actually a request from congress about five years ago where the park service is asking for funding every year, and so a congressman asked a simple question, I mean, it's not really simple, but it was a very short question, such as how many endangered species does the national parks have?

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Well, you know, then they sent a message out to all the different parks trying to figure it out.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And let me just say that it took months to answer this question that a guy asked very shortly. And they never really could answer it. And so, what became apparent here is that the park service needs baseline information.

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: And they've never had baseline science. So, a big pot of money came down to the parks, and those parks with, uh, what's called significant natural resources were put in networks, um, and so the Blue Ridge Parkway is in the, uh, Appalachian network I think it's called with the Smokies and Mammoth Cave. There's a couple parks up there. Because De Soto is so small, 26 acres—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —without our legislative boundary extended.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: They said that there has to be a certain number of acreage that a park even has to have to be considered significant resources. And so, we were not included in a network. Um, as a result, the—when you—when you figure that 80 percent of our park is natural resources, mangrove—

WHISNANT: And it—is De Soto the only one that wasn't included or were there some others—

KEVILL: No. No. There—there was probably—out of the 55 or so parks in the southeast region, there was probably 40 parks that were included—

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: —and there's about 15 that are not.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: And all those parks were cultural resource parks—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —where they felt as though either there wasn't significant resources or the resource didn't play a significant part in their story.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: Okay? Now, in—

WHISNANT: But here, 80 percent is—

KEVILL: Is—is natural resource and—and Charlie Fenwick, the previous superintendent, fought this. You know, he said, well, look, you know, we've got 80 percent resources, very significant to our story because this is the environment that De Soto met when he came here.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, we need to preserve this resource.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: It's not just because it's mangroves. Um, there's been a great loss of mangroves on Tampa Bay, up to 50 percent of the mangroves that were here in the 1500s when De Soto landed have been lost. Um, and—due to development and pollution, manmade causes for the most part.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, Charlie argued that we could be in a network. However, we were never included in one. So as a result, this park is not getting a lot of baseline information and—and has never had it in the past as far as, uh, flora and fauna, you know, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, all—fish—

WHISNANT: Does this also mean you're not getting money from this initiative?

KEVILL: Yes. Yes. We're not getting money from the initiative. Okay? If—if—if we were in a network, the network is given a certain amount of money, and a network works together as a committee to decide what needs to be done when and where.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: They then hire a botanist who's going to do their invertebrate work and he goes to all the different parks in the network, you know, and—and he does a report for them. So we're missing out on that. The—the good thing, though, is that when we have applied for money in the last few years, because we're not in the network, we—through—it's called small park funding, natural resource—

WHISNANT: You can go directly to the—

KEVILL: We—we can go through a PMIS statement and we are—have been funded for a couple of things in the last couple years that we wouldn't have been approved in the network. So we may get all the information, it's just we're going to have to do it a little different than what we would have before.

WHISNANT: And can you contract out to get it?

KEVILL: You—you can. And right now, we've got a contract out for—for invertebrate work and we—we've done that through a—a CESU, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that.

WHISNANT: I've seen that term but I'm not—I don't remember at the moment what it means.

KEVILL: Okay. And I don't know that this is exactly what it is, um, but it's—it's Cooperating Education System Unit, something like that, CESU.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And these are universities that have been contracted through the National Park Service to be the people who we can go to for research, and we don't have to contract out for three bids, okay? So, we have a contract right now with University of Florida to do an invertebrate study. They started it last year before I got here. They were supposed to be finished by December 31st, however, due to the red tide that was here—

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: —last year, they weren't able to do the fall survey, which is a very significant survey. So have an extension to do it this year. So—but that's just an example of the—we have no baseline information on our invertebrates here. Now, we can look at Tampa Bay and we can say, well, we should have this and this and this, but we don't know for sure, and so—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —any park is very irresponsible if their management can't say what it is they've got here in the park.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So, I see as—as one of the main things that we need to do, uh, as quickly as possible is to make sure that we get the funding to replace this work that's being done in networks to get the baseline information. Right now, we have an invertebrate study that's been started. Before I actually ever set foot here at De Soto to work, I, uh, did a PMIS statement for a mangrove study—

WHISNANT: And PMIS is?

KEVILL: It is Project Management Information System. That's how the park service now applied for funding for anything. If we want to get a new carpet in this visitors' center, which we got last year by the way, we have to do it through a project funding. Anything that's not taken out of our base funds, which is called ONPS, that's base funding. If—if we have money at the end of the year, we can replace carpet. But usually, you don't have it. So you apply with PMIS projects, and you compete with other parks.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: First year, you may not get it, but next year you might.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: So right now, we are highly considered with PMIS projects through natural—for natural resource funding because we're not in a network. So in the next year, starting in 2008, we hope to be funded for a mangrove study.

WHISNANT: Mm hmm.

KEVILL: Um, again, we know that we've got red, black, and white mangroves. But we don't know whether it's healthy or not.

WHISNANT: And the methodology for doing mangrove studies in Florida must be highly developed I would—I would assume.

KEVILL: It—it is. It is. The Everglades has done—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —a lot of studies. University of South Florida's done a lot of studies.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: We've got the expertise right here.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But it takes money.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, at—at any rate, what I think this park needs and—and I mean, this is everybody agrees on this. We need baseline information. And so that's probably something that, um, through the years, they've never really established.

WHISNANT: Now, I did come across one study down there, water—water quality—

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: —study. I don't know if you've seen that.

KEVILL: I haven't.

WHISNANT: Well, back there under—at the end of the hall—

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: —under that white thing—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —on the left hand side, it's about that thick, it has a blue spiral bound cover on it.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: And it's, um, it is—it was done very recently. I've got it in my computer. But, um, it was a—it was done by—by EPA, I think, um, and they—they—what they did was compile all the data from all their sampling stations—I mean, the—

KEVILL: Yeah. WHISNANT: —thousands and thousands of samples in hundreds of stations.

KEVILL: Right.

WHISNANT: But they kind of boil that stuff down for De Soto. So you might want to—

KEVILL: Definitely.

WHISNANT: —dig that thing out. If you just go back there on the left hand side, lift that—that white sheet up, you'll see it lying up there.

KEVILL: You think it's on the far left hand box?

WHISNANT: Far left hand box.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: Right under the—under that white cover.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: It's just lying there.

KEVILL: See, that's—

WHISNANT: But anyway, that's the only thing I have come across here.

KEVILL: Right. See, and we should have a bibliography of all of our natural resource. There should be a bibliography of cultural resource information, reports, studies, files—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —all that. And there should be one for natural resources, too. There is a system park service wide, it's called NRBIB, Natural Resource Bibliography, that's been established. In this park, evidently, no one's ever come here to do it. And so, you know, you just have to find these things scattered here and there.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So that—that helps—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —just to know it's there. That's probably surface water stuff, I would imagine.

WHISNANT: No. It's—it's surface water—yeah, it—I think it's mainly surface water.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: But they do talk about—I didn't read the whole study, Lord, I mean it's just hundreds of pages of tables. I'm not going to read that.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: But there is a little executive summary in the beginning. KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: And, um, they do talk about, you know, potable water, but I don't think they were really checking that.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: They were checking mainly for effect on the natural species—

KEVILL: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

WHISNANT: —and all that.

KEVILL: Grasses and—

WHISNANT: But I mean, it's a key document, presumably.

KEVILL: Right. It's certainly something that any researcher who comes in here doing like a mangrove study would want to look at the water quality work that's been done.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: There's no reason to duplicate all of that again.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But it—what they would need to do also would be to take sediment samples and samples of, uh, oysters, fish, our, um, crayfish, that sort of thing.

WHISNANT: Would they—like—I don't know anything about doing this.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: But—but like on a beach, like, I mean, there's three feet of beach left here.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Um, would they do like a core or something down a foot or two to just kind of see what's—what's in there?

KEVILL: Well, they can. Um, yeah. At Fort Pulaski, the place I just left, we did sediment testing for—for a water quality study and they actually did take cores. And they also took meat samples from oysters and they sent both these things to a lab. What they were looking for was heavy metals.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, because these things settle down in the sediments—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —and also oysters being, uh, uh, filter feeders.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: These are going to be the first things that mercury—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —and all of this shows up in, you know? And then if it's in fish, well, you know, it's much worse than oysters.

WHISNANT: You can get your daily cadmium—

KEVILL: Yes.

WHISNANT: —requirement by eating an oyster.

KEVILL: Exactly. And—and—and so at any rate, that is one way that—one methodology that's used. And so, I—I think that it's very important for us to get this—all this baseline data. And

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —and so we do have several proposals in for studies here, one of which has already been funded, one we think will be funded in 2008. We need a good vegetation map. That's a basic thing the parks should have. Most parks don't have them.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: It's very expensive to have it really well done, um, so that you can look through and you can—that way you can tell through time whether we've lost any of our mangroves and that sort of thing. You know, we—we really haven't looked at that. So—so at any rate, I would say that that's a top priority here as far as natural resources. Now, the one thing that I'm sure you know from looking through the files and everything is shoreline erosion.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: And— WHISNANT: I was—there are pictures—I don't know if I told you this. I told somebody. There are pictures down there in that five by—those two five by eight card drawers.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Do you know where those are?

KEVILL: Yes. I know—

WHISNANT: You know, under—underneath to the left there.

KEVILL: Yeah. Uh-huh

WHISNANT: Two—there's a two drawer five by eight little filing cabinet and it's got hundreds of cards in it. Each one has a little picture on it.

KEVILL: You're talking about in the cultural resource—the—the locked closet? Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Yeah. Just right over there.

KEVILL: Yeah. Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: Um, and I've been through all of those.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Every one of them. Um, there are pictures back to 1947 here.

KEVILL: Uh-huh

WHISNANT: I mean, they're tiny little things, you know, and some of them there are negatives for so you could get bigger ones. But—

KEVILL: Yeah, that's 60 years. Yeah.

WHISNANT: But, um, you know, as early as 1947 and

KEVILL: Showing the changes in the beach and everything.

WHISNANT: I mean, the beach was enormous. I mean

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —it was—I don't know how long, but it must have been 50, 60, 70 yards wide.

KEVILL: Yeah. I haven't looked at what you're talking about, but I have looked at some of the early landing event photos.

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: And in that, the—the berm is not there.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, what you've got is a flattened-out beach, which naturally is probably the way it—it could have been—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —other than the fact there could've been a shell midden there.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But in—but originally, that was just a flattened beach. And—and—and I've seen those photos.

WHISNANT: What—what it does, just as an aside—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —the—the photos as I recall from the '60s of the landings is basically a white, sandy beach.

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: You know, it's very sandy. And in '61, they did a big beach renourishment thing. Um, pumped huge amounts of sand in there. There are pictures of them doing that.

KEVILL: Uh-huh

WHISNANT: But before then, best I remember, certainly in the late '40s, um, the beach looks like it's not sandy. It's kind of broken up shell like stuff.

KEVILL: Oh.

WHISNANT: It looks—looks kind of muddy to sandy to me.

KEVILL: Oh. Okay.

WHISNANT: You might be interested to look at some of those.

KEVILL: Right. And that's probably the way it may have been originally. There—there wouldn't have been that sand. And when you look at the—at the ones from the late—where you saw a wide sand beach, that could have all been renourished.

WHISNANT: I think it was.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: By the way, I've got a hundred of those photographs on this machine if you wanted to click through them with me.

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: If that would be of any use to you.

KEVILL: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be—that would be—

WHISNANT: We could—we could do that.

KEVILL: —very interesting. That'd be very interesting. Um, yeah. I mean, that's—that's what we're interested in is changes through time. Right now, I've got—just last week, the day before you folks got here, I met with a student from the University of South Florida, and since we don't right now have money this year to do any more on our shoreline, what I'm trying to do is get a local university over in St. Petersburg and they've got a major marine studies program.

WHISNANT: Sure.

KEVILL: You know, we can help us and help them.

WHISNANT: Sure.

KEVILL: They've got students looking for projects.

WHISNANT: Sure. Masters theses. Sure.

KEVILL: Um, yeah. And—and I—I called over there and one of their professors came over and then he referred to a student, a student came last Tuesday. I was just looking at an email message when you came here then. Um, this student wants to know what it is we would like to do at this point.

WHISNANT: Wow. Great.

KEVILL: Okay? And—and so we would hope down the road, of course, to have money to be able to really contract with folks like this who can—are right here, they can, you know, make it an ongoing sort of thing. But, um, what we need to know really is—is a timeline of what's happened here and the way it—it looked and the way it should have looked.

WHISNANT: I—I think, Cliff, that those—that those pictures down there, when we get through here, if you have time

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: —here, we just click through it and—

KEVILL: Certainly.

WHISNANT: —I think you'll get a quick idea

KEVILL: Okay.

WHISNANT: —you know, of kind of what's there.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: I tried to take ones—I mean, there are many duplicates and all that.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: So I tried to just kind of take key ones.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: But I've got about a hundred of them on the machine.

KEVILL: Okay. Fantastic.

WHISNANT: So, we can—we can—

KEVILL: And you just took these with just—

WHISNANT: Yeah. And they come out fine. I mean, they're—they're fine.

KEVILL: Great. Okay. Well, that would—that would be fantastic. In fact, what I would like to do—I did this at the last park I was—I was in. I actually created a program on shoreline erosion—erosion and—and did it as a—a PowerPoint program that I could take around and show people and talk about our problem and we got, you know, a lot of support. And like if I could show, you know

WHISNANT: [inaudible]

KEVILL: —[inaudible] through time. Yeah.

WHISNANT: We could easily—those pictures are in a different folder on my machine.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: We could easily dump those to a—to a CD for you.

KEVILL: That would be excellent.

WHISNANT: And—and it could save you an awful lot of time.

KEVILL: That—that would be great.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: Because like—like this kid, you know, he's asking—you know, he—he—I've showed him all these different reports, but, you know, he needs something concise to know what it is you want us to do now, and if I could show him some pictures of the changes through time real quick, you know, rather than him have to go through all these reports—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —as you've had to do.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But that's one of the reasons we do an administrative history, is to kind of put this in a—

WHISNANT: Boil this down. Right.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So—so at any rate, you know, I think the shoreline erosion problem is a problem that's not going to go away. This building was probably built in the wrong place, you know—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —the fact—if

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —if the water has gotten within 15 feet of it, but a—a flattened beach wants to overflow occasionally.

WHISNANT: Dick Hite, when I interviewed him, said they should've put that thing on stilts, you know, or put it—put it up on—and they could've—they could've done a nice historical sort of design on that.

KEVILL: Exactly.

WHISNANT: It—it should've been raised eight or nine feet—

KEVILL: Yeah. And—

WHISNANT: —above the ground.

KEVILL: Right. Because, you know, now, we're trying create this artificial berm out there, which I—and I talked to Charlie about this, he says, well, that is somewhat symbolic of the shell midden that would've been there, you know—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —it wouldn't have been necessarily—if—if and when De Soto landed here, just a flattened beach, it would've been a flattened beach with this big mound up there.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So this in a way does recreate the historic scene, but at the same time, now with natural erosion. That shell midden would've eroded away, too, in time.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So, I think that it's the sort of thing where they just tried to put Band Aids on it in the past

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —and unfortunately, looking to the future, the short term, that's probably the same thing that's going to happen. We may have to put a hardened structure out there either right up along the shoreline or out from the shoreline, you know, a ways. But we want to protect the historic scene. We don't want people to stand up there and—and be looking at some sort of a rock jetty out in the water. You know, we want it to appear as it was when De Soto may have landed here.

WHISNANT: You know, there's a—there's a really good—there may be tremendously competent people in Florida, I'm sure there are, but—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —I happen to know that the person who's done I think the most work on that kind of thing on the North Carolina—

KEVILL: [inaudible]

WHISNANT: Orrin Pilkey, yeah.

KEVILL: Orrin Pilkey, yeah.

WHISNANT: So, I mean—

KEVILL: Yeah. Yeah, um, I—I know—I've met Orrin Pilkey, I've actually been to a workshop with him, he and Stan Riggs—you ever heard that name?

WHISNANT: No, I don't know Stan Riggs.

KEVILL: He's at East Carolina.

WHISNANT: Huh. KEVILL: And they've done a lot of reports. The dynamics of—of that coastline are a little bit different, and not to say you can't look at this stuff and you can say that

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —it—it's going to move naturally, right?

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: It could be, you know—

WHISNANT: You ain't going to stop this.

KEVILL: Yeah. We're not—you know, you—you can try.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But if so, then it's an unnatural system, and then you got—you got to keep putting up, you know, renourishing or whatever. But, um, they've done a lot of work in North Carolina. There are people that have done work on the Gulf Coast.

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: I don't think—Orrin Pilkey's the father of—of—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —coastal geomorphology or whatever.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Yeah. But, uh—but anyway, that sort of thing is what, you know, I would like to get somebody to look at the whole picture here, what—what's happened in the past, create, you know, kind of a timeline of how it got to this point, and—and then what is it that we can do now. And if the long-term plan is to move this building—well, this building will be moved eventually or—or rebuilt.

WHISNANT: Oh, really?

KEVILL: Well, yeah. I mean, this—you know, the building ain't going to be here forever.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: I mean, and so it was—it was built in the '60s.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And perhaps a smarter thing would either to be put it back or build it up. And you see that in a lot of places where—

WHISNANT: This building could be raised, probably.

KEVILL: Yeah. Whether this existing building could or whether it'd be easier just to start over again.

WHISNANT: Yeah.

KEVILL: I don't know. But I would think that that would be the sort of thing—and then, not to say you don't want to still take care of the berm out here and whatever, but if—if it—you don't have to be so focused on not letting the water wash over, you know?

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Yeah. So—so anyway—so we need a short-term plan, and we need a long term plan.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And a long term plan can be ten years from now, you know. But—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So—so at any rate, I would say at this point probably those two things are probably the most, uh, pressing—

WHISNANT: The data gathering and the—

KEVILL: Yeah. The baseline data that we need—that all parks need, and we are one of those parks and the, uh, shoreline erosion problem. That ongoing problem.

WHISNANT: More than the mangroves and the KEVILL: Well, I—I—the mangroves would be included the baseline information. We need baseline information—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —on all that stuff.

WHISNANT: But you don't feel that at the moment the mangroves are terribly threatened?

KEVILL: We don't know.

WHISNANT: You don't know.

KEVILL: We don't know. And—and so you need that baseline information. And so that would be one of the things. We need to make sure that the mangrove community is healthy.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And so, what they do is look at that and they can determine with a lot of different data, you know, looking at the number of shellfish—

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: —going into the sediments, looking at the bark, looking at the leaves, all that. They can determine the health of it. And we may have a very healthy, you know, system.

WHISNANT: And is this—excuse my ignorance on this topic. But—but is the mangrove swamp, say, a healthy mangrove swamp now—

KEVILL: Mm hmm.

WHISNANT: —is—would that be referred to as a sort of climax condition? I mean, you're not going to get the—the tall pines back again and—

KEVILL: Right.

WHISNANT: —so this is—this is it.

KEVILL: Yes.

WHISNANT: This is where it's going to go.

KEVILL: Yes. Yeah. You can look at this and—and say that this—probably as far as the mangrove system here is a virgin system in that it's never been all—like it hadn't been logged out and filled and whatever. This is probably the way that these mangroves were historically. Now, of course, they were farther out or whatever.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: And probably where the parking lot is now, that was mangroves that have been filled in because they had to get the shell midden to fill Highway 80—I mean Highway 64. That sort of thing.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: But—but yeah. I would say that this is—as far as like mangrove area, ecosystem, what you're looking at is what you've got because it can take salt water whereas all those other species—unless it fills in and you get higher ground, then they're not going to take hold. Yeah.

WHISNANT: Yeah. Yeah. So—well, I think that gives me a—a pretty good idea.

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: As I've said to everybody, I'm sure I'll have to come back and ask you questions because—

KEVILL: Yeah.

WHISNANT: —I'm trying to assimilate a huge amount of stuff—

KEVILL: Oh, yeah.

WHISNANT: —in a short time.

KEVILL: And—and, you know, I'm sure six months from now I may be able to tell you more.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: I mean, not—not because we've learned anything more, but just because I understand what—what it is we're doing.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, mangroves are something that's new to me. I'm very familiar with salt marsh, being from the Georgia coast, but we don't have mangroves up there.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: So, I'm—I'm learn—and—and they're compatible—or comparable in that they both are like the nursery for the shellfish and the seafood here and everything.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Very important.

WHISNANT: Right.

KEVILL: Um, and it's a buffer for hurricanes and things—

WHISNANT: Uh-huh

KEVILL: —also. It absorbs water in a—and so I—I'm learning all this, but I—but still, there's—you know—

WHISNANT: Right. Right.

KEVILL: —it's the tip of the iceberg at this point.

WHISNANT: Right. Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW

Description

In this interview, Kevill discusses his winding path throughout his career at NPS, starting as a seasonal employee and moving from park to park every six months from 1983 to 1986. Kevill also comments on the frustration he experiences in finding a balance between what is best for the environment best for the park and setting the historical scene to tell the story of the De Soto exploration. Interviewed by David Whisnant on May 9, 2006.

Credit

De Soto National Memorial

Date Created

05/09/2006

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