Work History - Out West Again, 2009-2017 - MIMA

Here’s a change of pace.  Back when I started with OneSource in 2009, the wish that I was going to retire someday started to become real to me.  Perhaps that was part of why, a few years later, I found myself happy in a job that was interesting but not really fulfilling??  Anyway, my mind would sometimes wander to what I was going to do when I retired, and that it would be great if it could add a dollop of “fulfilling” to my life.

Sarah and I have always really appreciated our National Park system in the U.S., and taken advantage of it when we could.  I was thinking idly that working in the National Park Service would be fulfilling, and then I realized that (duh!), I was driving right through a National Historical Park every morning and evening on my commute, Minute Man NHP (MIMA).  As with all people who have something so local that they don’t appreciate it, we’d rarely visited the Park until one fine Fall day in 2010 when we walked the Battle Road and they had most of their houses open.  We loved it and it made me read a history book … a rare behavior … on the American Revolution called Paul Revere’s Ride.

So I interviewed with the Park’s volunteer coordinator (Boss10), and was enlisted as an interpreter.  I started volunteering there in 2013, working four-hour shifts in the Minute Man Visitor Center, assisting the Rangers and talking with visitors about the significance of the Park, what happened there back in April 1775, and where the bathroom was.  My manager at OneSource was fine about me coming in in the afternoon on one day a week and making up the time on the other weekdays.  I really appreciated that, it was important to me and he realized that immediately.  Later managers also had no problem with this flex time.

Soon I got to know other Rangers and employees there and I got to understand the governance structure of the Park and the NPS (much more hierarchical than anything I’d experienced), what motivated the Rangers, and what incredible professionals they are.  I think they came to appreciate me too, how I interacted with visitors (you have to be sensitive to how to enhance their visit, not just be a man-splainer), and the fact that I’d do grunt work such as standing in the parking lot for hours handing out polls.  What I wanted to do was to assist their mission, and I was willing to do whatever it took to do that, as opposed to some volunteers who wanted to do only what they found rewarding, and on their schedule.

I realized that the Park’s “interpretation library” was just an unorganized pile of books, and the Ranger in charge jumped at my idea to organize it when she found out that I was a professional librarian and knew how to catalog books.  So that became my main task, as well as working with the Park’s educational mission and assisting Rangers in running programs for school groups.  After a few years doing that I graduated to working with the Park archivist.  I’ve also continued volunteering in the visitor centers from time to time and helping at Park events, like the annual extravaganza on April 19th.  I’m not a people person but I’ve had many rewarding experiences there and plan to continue helping out.