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Boss: The last time I saw you you were pretty angry guy.
Guy: I sure was.
Boss: That's why I told you to take a vacation. You needed to get back to the grassroots.
Guy: Ok, you told me to take a vacation.
Guy: When I left here I just threw some camping gear into a station wagon and took off for nowhere.
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Guy: This is a wonderful place for a vacation, sure.
Guy: But more than that. The grassroots...
Guy: ...the real heart and hope of America.
Guy: Right here in the middle West!
Guy: Let millions see them, and maybe understand this country a little better.
{Music}
Guy: It's something that millions of people feel, right here.
Guy: Even though they may not say much about it.
Boss: Give me this kind of story about the people over there, the places over there.
Boss: Warm human stuff.
Guy: What I've seen in the faces of these people, what's in their lives, their hearts, their hopes, their opportunities.
Guy: That's something alive right here in the middle west!
{Music}
[Drum Roll] Announcer: And now, on with the show!
Narrator: I grew up in Virginia...
Narrator: ...in the Shenandoah Valley on a farm. I wanted to work in the outdoors...
Narrator: ...but I didn't really know about the park service that much until I was in college.
Narrator: I went to the College of William and Mary and got a degree in Biology.
Narrator: Through the summers I worked in a variety of mostly heavy industry.
Narrator: I was a maintenance mechanic at a school bus factory.
Narrator: So, I had all this access to tools.
Narrator: So I outfitted a, think was a 1968, GMC van as a camper.
Narrator: And I took off out West.
Narrator: Traveled for about five months
Narrator: camping in the national parks basically across the northern tier
Narrator: down the Pacific Coast up through the Rockies.
Narrator: Saw many of the, not all of them, but many great national parks.
Narrator: I come back to Washington D.C. It's the winter of 75/76.
Narrator: I was broke. I crashed at my brother's place in Alexandria.
Narrator: I have skills so I got a job immediately as a welder.
Narrator: Welding aquarium frames at a factory.
Narrator: And my brother was working for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Narrator: He walked in one night and threw on my bed...
Narrator: He said now read this and write me a report, typical older brother kind of orders.
Narrator: And it was the environmental impact statement
Narrator: for the expansion of the Jackson Hole Airport in Grand Teton National Park.
Narrator: And I said so they're kind of threatened by this you know
Narrator: and so I talk to my brother about it.
Narrator: He said we should think about
Narrator: applying for a job in the park service. Really what I was thinking about at the time was
Narrator: going back to grad school
Narrator: and pursuing an advanced degree in Biology.
Narrator: And you know he literally said you know don't go off
Narrator: and study the life history of the liverwort.
Narrator: He said you need to go do something that has an impact and he said you could do that in the Park Service
Narrator: I applied for a seasonal job. I got hired, as an 026 GS 4, maybe 3
Narrator: park technician at the Bicentennial Information Center on the mall.
Narrator: And I've never looked back. Worked for for the park service for 37 years.
Interviewer: What do you do?
Narrator: Work in Washington D.C. with an extraordinary team
Narrator: of associate directors.
Narrator: I work directly for the Secretary of the Interior.
Narrator: And have responsibility for this agency of 25,000 employees,
Narrator: and eighty million acres,
Narrator: that happens to be in 18 time zones and
Narrator: responsible for the nation's most beautiful places
Narrator: and most important cultural heritage.
Narrator: I'm Jon Jarvis. I am the 18th Director of the National Park Service.
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[Old film reel noise]
[Sounds of a waterfall and a light wind, distant voices of men, women and children]