Chapter 10:
The Winds of Change
When in the fall of 1962 I was elected president of
the American Institute of Park Executives, one of the first things I did
was to appoint a committee to look into the advisability of trying for
the fourth time in thirty-five years to bring together in some kind of a
federation the five or six different organizations then supporting the
park and recreation movement. The committee was asked to have its report
ready for consideration at the 1963 AIPE meeting in Washington, D.C. We
felt that a federation would bolster each group's particular field of
park and recreational activity without disrupting its primary purpose,
provide a channel for interchange of professional experience and a
planning interchange at all levels of government, and manage the administrative
overhead common to all at considerable savings. These savings
could be used for research and planning and thus provide the
professional park and recreational men with the tools to carry out their
responsibilities.
The joint meeting of the American Institute of Park
Executives and the National Conference on State Parks in the fall of
1963 was the next big event as my retirement grew closer. The meeting
started on Sunday, September 22, and ran through Friday, the
twenty-seventh. As president of the AIPE and chairman of the board of
the National Conference on State Parks, I was very busy. On Wednesday I
was presiding over the joint meeting, the main subject of which was the
report of the committee on the matter of consolidation. Vice-president
Lyndon B. Johnson, an old friend of mine of some thirty years, was not
on our program, but I had asked him to drop in at one of our afternoon
general joint meetings, and he said he would try. That Wednesday he did,
and the visit was a real surprise to our group. Charles K. Boatner, our
information chief at the time, had been on the vice-president's staff
when Johnson was in Congress and knew him well. He had prepared a very
nice one-page statement that I could use to introduce the
vice-president. Johnson was escorted by several secret service men, some
of whom came in beforehand and placed themselves so that they could get
a good view of the whole assemblage of over a thousand people. I stopped
the proceedings, but before I could announce what was happening, the
vice-president came through the door and headed straight for the podium.
I gave my short introduction, and then he took over.
He spoke first of the importance of preserving our
natural heritage and then talked at some length about our American
values, concluding with this personal anecdote:
One of the first projects I got for my district was a
conservation projecta soil conservation project with CCC labor.
One of the next things was a WPA project that extended running water to
our school for the first time. We had to dig through the soil with
picks. We had a new teacher at our little school. He was very proud of
the fact that the Congressman had graduated from it, so he was
introducing me down the line to all these people who had been raised
with me and my father and my grandfather in this little town of Johnson
City named after my grandfather. He introduced me to Mr. Smith and to
Mr. Brown and each time he said, "Do you know our new Congressman?" (He
was a little pompous.) Every one of those old fellows looked up. They
did not want to be deterred from their jobs by meeting a boy they grew
up with, and of course all of them knew meknew me too well,
perhaps. When I was a youngster, nine years old, I had a shoeshine
parlor. There was a man named Earl Haley. He went off to war, and when
he came back on furlough we would shine his shoes and his leggings. He
would come in every Saturday, and he had more money than the locals did.
He made $30 a month in the Army, and he would always give us a dime
tipa dime to shine his shoes and a dime tip.
After the war, Earl wound up on the WPA, and he was
out with his pick and he was digging. The school superintendent said:
"Mr. Haley, do you know our new Congressman?" Earl had a chew of
tobacco in his mouth. He spat it out and said: "Know him? I reckon I
know him. He used to shine my shoes." I wonder how many shoe shine boys
we have in the audience this morning. But that is the strength of
America. Here in America boys who shine your shoes have a chance to rise
to the highest offices in the land, and we really mean what we say in
our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution about equality.
We really proved last election that you can elect a man from the north
who is a Catholic and a man from the south who is a Protestant.
Although we have always had with us some prejudice
and some bigotry, we are proving every day that we love this country and
we are going to preserve it and we are going to protect it and we are
going to do what we think is best for it. That is why you are here
today, and I prize my association with you.
Our final meeting was to be a banquet at the Sheraton
Park Hotel. The secretary of the interior and Assistant Secretary John
Carver and their wives were invited to attend as our guests, along with
the chiefs of the various bureaus with which we did business and other
government officials. The day before the banquet Dick Rogers, an
assistant to John Carver, contacted me to say that Carver, who was
acting secretary, wanted me to put the director of the Bureau of Outdoor
Recreation at the head table. I told Dick this couldn't be done because
the committee had already made all the table arrangements and had
provided special tables right in front of the podium for the chiefs of
the bureaus, and I couldn't put one of them at the head table if I
wanted to. I emphasized that this meeting was not sponsored by the Park
Service or the Interior Department but by an association of federal,
state, and local park people who had their own rules to which we
adhered. Although I happened to be president, I was not going to try and
tell the banquet committee what to do. His reply was that he would
report that to the acting secretary, but he would rather be out of town.
I told him I'd be glad to call Carver myself, but resignedly he said,
"No, I'll do it." I heard no more that night.
The next morning I was sitting at a desk in the hotel
convention office making some notes with some dozen people standing
close by. The whole convention was about to leave by bus for Arlington
National Cemetary to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,
followed by a tour of the Washington park system. There were some two
thousand people in all. In walked one of our park police sergeants who
came up to me and said, "Director Wirth, Secretary Carver sent me here
to bring you down to his office right away." Everybody turned and looked
at me. I thought for a moment and then said, "Well, Sergeant, will you
please tell the Acting Secretary that I can't come right now because we
are about to leave to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,
and after that is over I will be happy to come to his officeand I
can do so under my own power." The sergeant looked at me and smiled and
said, "Mr. Wirth, that is what I had hoped you would say." And he
left.
After the ceremony in Arlington I proceeded to the
Interior Department and went up to my office. Associate Director George
Hartzog was there and suggested I be conciliatory in this case to
satisfy Carver and avoid an argument. I told him no, I would not do
that, that I would tell Carver frankly why I could not respond to his
request and he should be smart enough to understand. I went to Carver's
office, and he showed me the draft of a wire he intended to send
Laurance Rockefeller. It asked Rockefeller not to give his scheduled
talk that night at the banquet. I told John to go ahead and send it, but
I suggested he dispatch it to the hotel because Rockefeller was already
there and had given me the pleasure of reading his talk, which I thought
was an excellent one. I also reminded him that the invitation to speak
had been extended by the AIPE and the NCSP, not by the department or the
service. He took back the wire, and as far as I know he never sent it.
He then said he was thinking of calling off the Park Service's field
meeting in Yosemite National Park that was to start on October 13, a
little more than two weeks off. He said he would do it on the basis of
cost, and that he had asked the Park Service budget office to give him a
detailed report on the total cost of the proposed meeting.
I told Carver that he should have asked me for this
information because I already knew how much it would cost, that in fact
this was our regular biennial meeting year and the necessary funds were
included in our budget which the department had approved and Congress
had appropriated. I told him that each park and office would have
representatives at the meeting, that the money had already been allotted
to them for their expenses, and that the total cost would be
approximately $25,000. He said, "Well, I'm thinking of calling the
meeting off." I said, "John, you have the authority to do it, but I
suggest you let us know before people start traveling to the meeting."
Then I said, "John, why do you do these things? Why can't you be
reasonable and understand that this meeting now going on in Washington
is not a federal meeting; there are over 2,000 people attending and only
about one per cent of them are federal government employees. This is
their meeting, not yours or mine, and I think you're making a very
unreasonable request and you can't give me one good reason why the
director of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation should be at the head
table and not the head of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the head of the
General Land Office, or the representatives of the Reclamation Service,
the Forest Service, the Public Health Service, or the Bureau of Public
Roads." He didn't say a word; his face was red, and I think mine must
have been too. Neither of us had anything more to say and I left.
We had a very good banquet. Mark Evans, of
Metromedia, and later ambassador to Finland, was master of ceremonies.
Representatives were present from the Department of the Interior,
Agriculture, Health, Education, and Welfare, and Commerce. Laurance
Rockefeller gave a very fine talk and it was well received. The evening
was really a gala affair. There were two tables up front for bureau
chiefs and all were introduced. John Carver did not show up, and I did
not see him again until the Yosemite meeting.
Mrs. Wirth and I arrived in Yosemite on Friday,
October 11. Others started coming in on Saturday, and the field meeting
started with reunions, committee meetings, and social functions on
Sunday. On Monday "The Road to the Future" was presented with slides and
sound, and this presentation together with the discussions that followed
took up most of the day.
At breakfast on the second day Hillory Tolson gave me
a sealed envelope that contained his request for retirement as of
December 31, 1963. I felt sure he didn't know that I was going to
retire, and he had certainly kept his own plans secret until then. Here
we both were, announcing our retirement at the Yosemite meeting. It was
short notice, but I talked it over with George Hartzog and we decided it
should be made public. Wednesday at the noon time stop at Wawona, on a
trip through the park, we had a little ceremony for Hillory. I don't
think we did very well, but it was the best we could do under the
circumstances.
The next day John Carver came in shortly after noon,
addressed the conference, and left right afterwards for Washington. He
had kept secret what he was going to say, and I guess the 1963 meeting
in Yosemite could be called the "meeting of secrets." Carver lashed out
at the Park Service in no uncertain terms. He picked on picayune things
that had crept into some correspondence and on job descriptions that,
taken out of context, were misleading, especially to those looking for
things to crab about. The tenor of his remarks is illustrated by the
following excerpts:
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Laurance S. Rockefeller addresses a
banquet audience at the joint meeting of the American Institute of Park
Executives and the National Conference on State Parks in Washington,
D.C., in 1963. Ambassador Mark Evans, master of ceremonies, is seated
next to Director Wirth, with Mrs. Rockefeller at the left. Photo by
Abbie Rowe, courtesy National Park Service.
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...I sometimes have the feeling that the entire Park
Service is resolutely shutting its eyes to the fact of the creation of
the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, and to the nature of the functions
assigned to it. Particularly do I have the feeling that the Secretary's
order creating the Bureau and the subsequent act of Congress (not to say
the specific directions of the appropriations committees contained in
their reports) are regarded as idle conversation. Perhaps if you don't
think about such things they will go away. But I don't think so.
At this conference you are going to discuss the Long
Range Plan. I would advise you constantly to bear in mind that you can't
bootstrap your way into ascendancy in functions which have by
Secretarial order and by law been transferred to another bureau.
Which leads to my third point. When all else fails,
the Park Service seems always able to fall back upon mysticism, its own
private mystique. Listen to this sentence: "The primary qualification
requirement of the Division Chief position, and most of the subordinate
positions. . . is that the employees be. . . imbued with strong convictions
as to the 'rightness' of National Park Service philosophy,
policy and purpose, and who have demonstrated enthusiasm and ability to
promote effectively the achievement of National Park Service goals."
This has the mystic, quasi-religious sound of a
manual for the Hitler Youth Movement. Such nonsense is simply
intolerable. The National Park Service is a bureau of the Department of
the Interior, which is a Department of the United States government's
executive branchit isn't a religion, and it should not be thought
of as such.
Of course you should have strong convictions, but you
are expected also to have discipline. The sentence I've read is from a
proposed submission to be made to the Civil Service Commission, which
reached my desk last month. Taken by itself, it might be interpreted not
to have the connotation I've given it.
But read on with me. Later in the report there is
singled out a truly classic case, admirably suited to emphasize the
mystical nature of your jobs. That was the famous "hunting in the parks"
statement of September 14, 1961, issued without Departmental clearance,
and leading to a crisis in public relations the like of which had not
been seen up to that time. The Secretary was made to look foolish; I was
caught in a vicious crossfire, and the whole thing was a fiasco.
Out of it, eventually, came the Leopold Report, the
solid backing for a good position, but to credit the Park Service with
the Leopold Report is like crediting a collision at sea for a dramatic
rescue effortthe captain of the offending ship is hardly likely to
get a medal for making the rescue effort possible.
His points were essentially confined to one theme:
"You didn't say anything about me;" but they further revealed a lack of
understanding of nationwide comprehensive planning plus a flair for
poor judgment, the same trait Carver showed at Chancellorsville and the
banquet in Washington a few weeks earlier. Surely the BOR never expected
that it would be required to plan all the parks, recreation fields, and
open spaces for all the federal agencies and the political subdivisions
of the nation, nor did Congress, nor the secretary of the interior. That
bureau is responsible for putting together an overall plan and reporting
on the park and recreation system of the nation as a whole, but the only
way they can do that is to collect information from the state and
federal agencies handling park and recreation work. If the Bureau of
Outdoor Recreation were given enough money I am sure that they would be
highly successful, and the nation would be much better off if they
followed the same principle as the Public Roads Administration, that is,
working with the state and federal agencies. The basic studies must be
done by those in charge of managing the parks. Further, neither the
secretary nor Congress has transferred the responsibility of the
National Park Service to the BOR; the service is required by law to
think and plan to better carry out its responsibility to the country.
Not only does this not interfere with the BOR, but it actually
makes it possible for the BOR to better carry out its own responsibility
to develop a national comprehensive outdoor recreation plan that
will include all governmental agencies that deal with parks and
recreation.
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The meeting in Yosemite National Park in
October, 1963, at which Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Carver
delivered his "National Park Service mystique" remarks. Courtesy
National Park Service.
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As to the primary qualifications of a division chief
in the Park Service: believe me, if he is not interested in the parks
and loyal to his objectives he shouldn't be there. Anyone in any agency,
public or private, who doesn't feel that he can carry out its policy and
be a part of the team should seek other employment. Further, all the
"philosophy, policy, and purpose" of the National Park Service was
established by law and the department. When Carver calls loyalty
"mystique" and implicates it with the Hitler Youth Movement, all I can
do is apply his own words to his attitude and reasoning: "Such nonsense
is simply intolerable."
The last item he brings up is about "hunting in the
parks" and the "Leopold Report." As I recall the policy he refers to had
been followed through the years with the approval of the department
secretaries long before Carver took office, and everybody knew it. The
Leopold Report, as he indicated, substantiates the policy. Our basic
act states that we are to preserve the parks "and the wildlife therein,"
but there are many things that experts like Leopold, in and out of the
service, have worked on through the years that make it possible for us
to mandate and at the same time meet the problems caused by the changes
in the habits of the creature called man. I am sorry that John got
caught in "a vicious crossfire." It was of his own making.
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George B. Hartzog, Jr., director of the
National Park Service from January 8, 1964, to December 31, 1972.
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That auditorium was full of very angry people after
Carver's speech. He left immediately, handing Tom Flynn a bundle of
copies of his speech and telling him to distribute them. (Tom had been
in Carver's office before joining the service as chief of the office
that administered our concessions.) He came to me and asked what he
should do. The speech was terrible, and so I told Tom to go ahead and
distribute them. When Carver got back to Washington he held a press
conference. The next day The New York Times reported that I was
being fired. This news hit Yosemite the morning of the day that
Secretary Udall arrived. George Hartzog and I met the secretary at El
Portal early in the afternoon, and I gave him my letter requesting
retirement. It was unchanged from the draft he had seen some nine months
earlier. The conference was all settled in the assembly room when we
arrived at Camp Curry in Yosemite Valley. I introduced the secretary,
and he announced that I had given him my request to retire and read my
letter. Eivind Scoyen was at the meeting and told how several of us had
met over a year earlier to make recommendations on the upcoming
retirements, and that the secretary had accepted our suggestions. The
secretary, after praising me and mentioning how everything had been
handled in accordance with my long-standing requests and suggestions,
announced the appointment of George Hartzog as director effective
January 9, 1964, the date of my retirement, and of Clark Stratton
to succeed Hartzog as associate director. There was no doubt in my mind
that Udall had learned of what Carver had done and was trying to smooth
things over without mentioning the subject.
I have described these events to serve as a warning,
because such things are bound to happen to others, and the worst part of
it is that one is almost helpless to defend himself. Now, years later,
many of my friends have urged me to tell what happened and clear the
record, and to do so complies with one of the basic purposes of this
book, namely to expose life as a career civil servant.
On Monday, October 28, 1963, Senator Harry F. Byrd,
of Virginia, placed a speech in the Congressional Record
defending my reputation as former director of the National Park Service.
Included in the speech were a letter from Secretary Udall and also an
editorial from the Washington Evening Star. The Washington
Evening Star editorial was from the October 22, 1963 issue:
October 22, 1963
Mr. Horace Albright,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Dear Horace:
Needless to say, I share your concern over the items
which appeared in the press which implied that Director Connie Wirth's
retirement was a result of some policy crisis or personality conflict
within my Department. Nothing could be more untrueof more unfair
to Connie.
You know the high esteem that I have for him and I
attempted to convey this at the Yosemite conference when I stated that
his contribution has given him a place on the highest honor roll of
those in this century who have done the most to preserve a rich outdoor
legacy for the American people.
In order that you will have the true facts concerning
the leadership transition in the National Park Service I want to recite
them again:
(1) At the time Associate Director Eivind Scoyen
retired in early 1962 it was my feeling, and I expressed it to Director
Wirth, that he should be replaced with a career man who would be
selected and groomed to become the next director;
(2) Connie concurred, and late last year he submitted
to me a list containing the names of five career Park Service employees
whom he recommended for consideration for appointment as associate
director;
(3) After much discussion and evaluation we decided
to ask George Hartzogwho was then employed by downtown St.
Louisto come to Washington for a special interview, and at that
time we persuaded him to return to the Park Service and accept the
associate director's position;
(4) Later, in February or March Connie indicated that
he intended to retire about January 1, 1964, and stated that he would
like to announce his retirement at the Biennial Conference of
Superintendents at Yosemite in October. At that time I agreed to attend
this conference and we also decided to make a final decision during the
intervening period on his successor and to announce his appointment
simultaneously.
As you observed at Yosemite, the arrangements we made
were carried out and it gave me the highest pride and satisfaction to
note the deep affection and loyalty felt for Connie by his associates in
the Park Service, and the warm and enthusiastic reception given to the
announcement of the Hartzog appointment.
The public should know the facts I have outlined here
and I am confident that you and other friends of Director Wirth and of
the Park Service will help to see that the truth is disseminated and any
misapprehensions are dispelled.
Sincerely,
Stewart L. Udall
Secretary of the Interior
We have sometimes been critical, even strongly
critical, of the stiffnecked attitude of the National Park Service. When
it stands like Horatius at the bridge, blocking some project vital to
the emerging new Washington, patience runs low.
On the other hand, if it had not been for the
National Park Service, Washington might well have lost, or perhaps never
have acquired, what amounts to one of the finest park systems in the
world.
Since 1951, Conrad L. Wirth has been Mr. Park Service
to us.
Connie Wirth's retirement as Park Service Director
was announced last Friday, 4 days after Assistant Secretary of the
Interior Carver made a speech to park superintendents that was highly
critical of the organization's attitudes and contained the implication
that the Interior Department high command had lost patience with Mr.
Wirth.
Among other things Mr. Carver charged the Service
with resorting to a semireligious mystique to thwart Interior
Department policies. He said it fostered a public-be-damned attitude
and was not cooperating with the Department's new Bureau of Outdoor
Recreation.
Mr. Wirth denies that his retirement was hastened by
his superiors. And Interior Secretary Udall, since Mr. Carver's speech,
has taken pains to praise Mr. Wirth's record and to disavow to Mr.
Wirth's subordinates Mr. Carver's implied slap. It is now clear that
George B. Hartzog, who is to succeed Mr. Wirth as Director, was one of
five men recommended for the post by Mr. Wirth. His selection does not
presage an aboutface in the national park policy.
We are glad that this is the case. For to sacrifice
to expediency or popular demands of the moment the basic policy of
conserving natural America for generations yet unborn could have tragic
consequences.
The men who fathered the park movement were zealots.
They were missionaries. Without these qualities the movement never would
have got off the ground. The men who continue their work must have the
same basic zeal.
While we intend to continue to argue the merits of
specific decisions on the use of park land, we do not believe that a
"soft" policy concerning such use should be adopted. We congratulate
Connie Wirth on 32 years of dedicated service to the Nation and
especially to its Capital. If his successor does as well, we will all
have been very ably served.
The banquet on the last night of the Yosemite meeting
in the Ahwanee was one the like of which could not ever be repeated. The
Ahwanee's big dining room was full; the dinner was great; my brother,
the admiral, and his wife had come up from San Francisco; the park
people and concessionaires put on a skit; and the ovation I got was
tremendous. Udall, who sat next to me, turned to me after the applause
and remarked, "That was a tremendous ovation they gave you, you've got a
lot of loyal friends." The secretary, who said a few nice words, seemed
hurt, I thought, by what Carver had done the day before. At any rate, it
was a gala affair and we all had fun. Helen and I greatly appreciated
the demonstration. What crowned the evening as far as I was concerned
was what Helen Wirth did. She stood up and asked for the floor and got
it and gave one the nicest short talks I've ever heard, thanking
everybody for all they had done for us over the years. It was absolutely
perfect. She did something that I could not do, and I felt very proud to
be her husband. The meeting had come to a pleasant finish, and a couple
of days later we left for a meeting with the secretary's advisory board
on national parks and the dedication of the Horace M. Albright Training
Center at Grand Canyon National Park.
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