Oral History Interview with David Given

David Given

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH

DAVID GIVEN

PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON JUNE 11, 2020

INTERVIEWED BY DEBORAH HARVEY AUDIO FILE #BRVB061120 – DAVID GIVEN

EDITORIAL NOTE

This document is a rendering of the oral history interview as transcribed by the interviewer from the audio recording. Although effort was made to provide a verbatim transcription, for easier reading of the transcript, verbal pauses, repetitions of words, and encouraging words from the interviewer were omitted. The resulting oral history interview transcript was provided to the informant for review and, if necessary, correction. Mr. Given made significant modifications to the draft transcript. For the original interview, please refer to the audio file.

ABSTRACT

Mr. David Given reviews the course of his career with the National Park Service. He describes his work on the legislation to establish Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site as well as Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve and Nicodemus National Historic Site. Mr. Given describes the process of conducting a New Area Study and gives and overview of the history of such studies in the National Park Service. He discusses the roles various people in the Midwest Regional Office of the National Park Service had in setting up the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site at the beginning. Mr. Given briefly describes how it happened that the Brown Foundation was granted money to function as a partner for the park and how getting the funds to the Brown Foundation through the yearly appropriations from Congress for National Parks worked. He also describes the selection of the first three Superintendents for Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, how they fared as Superintendents at the site, and what became of each of them. Mr. Given describes and discusses the contributions of other staff members at Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. He briefly discusses restoration of the building and the subsequent Grand Opening/Dedication held in 2004. Mr. Given describes some of the training given to incoming Superintendents and some of the individualized action items detailed to Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site Superintendents. He briefly discusses the issue of budget for this and other parks in the Midwest Region.

PERSONS MENTIONED

Ron Cockrell, Senator [Nancy] Kassebaum, Senator [Bob] Dole, Michael Gessler, Kathy Ormiston, Cheryl Brown Henderson, Angela Bates, Congressman [Sam] Brownback, [President Ronald] Reagan, Sändra Washington, Don Castleberry, Bill Schenk, Sherda Williams, Harry Butowsky, Steve Adams, Tom Richter, Bess Sherman, Ray Harper, Dennis Vasquez, Teri Gage, Marty Sutherland, David Smith, Associate Justice Steven Breyer, President [George W.] Bush, Robin White.

David Given, 2019

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH

DAVID GIVEN

Interviewer: Okay. This is looking good. So, I’m going to start with an introduction for the purposes of future researchers who are – who are looking at this work. This oral history interview is for the Administrative History of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas. The interviewer is Deborah Harvey, with Outside The Box, on behalf of the Midwest Regional Office of the National Park Service. Interviewed today is David Given, among many other things, former Deputy Director for the Midwest Regional Office. The date is June 11, 2020. This interview takes place via videoconferencing.

So, Mr. Given, as I’m sure you know, the purpose of an – of an Administrative History is to document the development of a unit of the National Park System, both physically and administratively. Oral histories are one way to get information that might not otherwise be available from documentary evidence. We do try to get as much information as we can from as many different perspectives as possible in order to craft a robust narrative of the developmental history of the park. This will be used by future park administrators to inform their decisions as they navigate future developments. I do want to say that I do appreciate that you are giving your time to share your experiences of the development of Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site to further this project. So, to start with, I’m going to ask you to, first, state your name and spell your last name, please.

Given: My name is David Given, G-I-V-E-N.

Interviewer: Okay. And we’re going to start, first, with your – the, kind of, history of your work with the – for the National Park Service and then move on to the specifics of your work at Brown v. Board. So, when did you start at the National – with the National Park Service?

Given: I began working for the Park Service in January of 1978 as an environmental engineer at the Park Service’s Denver Service Center. And I was actually in the planning branch, not the design branch as – where most engineers were located.

Interviewer: Why was that?

Given: The Park Service had a lot of monies from the Bicentennial Land Heritage Program to upgrade or put in new water and sewer systems, and they needed to write Environmental Assessments or Environmental Impact Statements for all these projects. Before that, at the Denver Service Center, that work had been done almost exclusively by wildlife biologists. They decided, with all the water and sewer projects, they might try something a little different, and they hired three environmental engineers about the same time on the Midwest-Rocky Mountain team to work on the Environmental Assessments for these water-sewer projects. I worked at the Denver Service Center for about two years, at which point, I went to the Park Service’s Midwest Regional Office in Omaha on a detail. I was supposed to go there for two years to learn how another part of the Park Service worked, but I never went back. (Laughter) I ended up staying in the Midwest Regional Office for almost my entire career and went through a series of increasingly responsible positions. When I went, I was in a park planning position, and I also had some responsibilities for environmental compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. I progressed to being the Chief of the Branch of Planning and Environmental Quality, the Associate Regional Director for Planning and Resource Preservation, which had, underneath it, as an aside, the Cultural Resources Branch, so I was the second-level supervisor for all those people doing these Administrative Histories, including Ron Cockrell. (Laughter) I went to Washington, D.C. for about a year as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Director, working on matters related to the reorganization of the National Park Service.

Interviewer: When was that?

Given: That was in 1995. In 1994, I was one of a small group of people who were thrown together to develop a reorganization plan. The Clinton administration had an initiative to streamline government. Every administration has something like that. This one required agencies to reduce by a certain number of positions through this – through streamlines, and the Park Service’s number was fourteen hundred and change. And it put together this small group to figure out how to do that. We did that, and the Deputy Director asked me – I was actually his second choice – to come in and manage the reorganization process for them for a year.

Interviewer: So, after you – after you had come up with a plan, he asked you to administer that plan? Is that correct?

Given: Yes, to help implement it. And so I spent a lot of time working with the senior leadership of the Park Service on how to do that, and I ended up going back to Omaha, which wasn’t necessarily supposed to happen, but I went back as the Region’s Deputy Regional Director in the fall of 1995 and stayed in that position until I retired in 2010.

Interviewer: Alright! So, you have pretty much been involved in everything that’s ever happened at Brown v. Board?

Given: Yes.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Well, that’s a good thing! Let’s just start with, were you – in what way, or were you, at all, involved in getting the legislation going? I mean, it was established in ’93, right?

Given: You’ll have to tell me the date, but yes, I was quite involved in the legislative process. The legislation happens a little different for each park. In the case of Brown v. Board, the lead Congressional offices were on the Senate side. That’s my recollection. And I worked closely with the staff of both Senator Kassebaum and Senator Dole. I worked mainly with Michael Gessler on Senator Kassebaum’s staff, who I was also working with of the Establishment of Tallgrass Prairie in that same time frame, but also with Kathy Ormiston on Senator Dole’s staff. The third new National Park Service area that was under discussion in Kansas was Nicodemus. Kathy Ormiston was the legislative lead on that project.

Interviewer: Was that at the same time?

Given: Nicodemus was a little later, but not a lot. And, in fact, there was – there was a decent amount of back and forth interaction and sharing of how to do things between Brown v. Board and Nicodemus.

Interviewer: Okay. For getting the legislation through – passed?

Given: Yes. Yeah. And Dole’s office was lead on Nicodemus. And Kassebaum’s wasn’t as involved in Nicodemus, but Dole’s office was. And Cheryl Brown Henderson worked closely with Angela Bates who was the lead private-sector person on Nicodemus.

Interviewer: So, Cheryl Brown Henderson was working – but she was working mainly on Brown v. Board through – was she working mostly with Dole’s office, or was she working with both of the Senators?

Given: Both of them and probably with the House delegation also, but – because my recollection was that the Senate, kind of, took the lead on this. In Kansas, the Congressional delegation had very good internal relationships. And despite the fact that there were both Republicans and Democrats, things weren’t as partisan then as they are now, and they tended to do things by consensus, and they worked closely together as a group in Washington. And different offices would have the lead, but they did a lot of communication within the delegation.

Interviewer: So, they were a collaborative group, right?

Given: Yes, very much so.

Interviewer: Okay. Do you – what – do you recall much about the activities for getting the legislation passed? Were there any serious hiccups or bumps in the road for that, that you recall?

Given: Brown went pretty smoothly. There was an issue with Congressman Brownback, who later became Senator and then Governor of Kansas, on all new NPS areas – he was very conservative and had this idea that he wanted any new unit of the Park Service that was created to be revenue-neutral – totally revenue-neutral. He tried to put that in the legislation of one or more of the proposed Kansas parks, I don’t remember which ones. but the rest of the delegation talked him out of it, eventually. This would not have worked well at all for Brown – how would you have ever gotten the money to restore the school in a revenue-neutral fashion?

Interviewer: Oh, my! (Laughs) Yeah. Or even do any – yeah, or even do any kind of the planning documents? They cost money!

Given: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. Okay, well, I’m glad that didn’t hold it up completely forever.

Given: No, but my recollection was Brown went relatively smoothly for a piece of legislation. And one of the things I attribute that to was the collaboration on the delegation. They worked things out among themselves so that, when it came time to introduce the legislation, the whole delegation was behind it, and, typically, when there’s something that pretty much mainly affects a single state, if the delegation agrees, the rest – the rest of the House and the Senate – and that’s particularly strong on the Senate – if both Senators agree on something that affects only their state, the other Senators will defer to them.

Interviewer: Okay. They don’t – they say, “Yeah, whatever?”

Given: Yeah.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Okay. Did you have a chance to go – or had you seen Monroe School and the prospective site before you were involved in the legislation to designate it?

Given: Yes. Or about the time we were getting involved. And – yeah, so, we’re getting to the next one here [from a list of preliminary questions sent to him before the interview]: “What is your first impression of the site?”

Interviewer: What was your first impression of the site?

Given: It was going to be a project.

Interviewer: It was going to take some money?

Given: This – yes. The school was in not very good condition. It was basically being used as a storeroom by the current owner. You could see that the façade had really neat architecture for a school – especially for an elementary school. And it had good bones, but to restore it to anything like what it was in the historic time period, in the ‘50s, was going to take time and money. That was clear from the start.

Interviewer: Right. Was there a Feasibility – was there a Feasibility Study done for it? I mean, I know that some parks, there’s a Feasibility Study that talks – asks – talks about, “Is there going to be room for parking? Is there going to be enough room for offices. Are there going to be enough bathrooms,” that kind of stuff?

Given: You are asking about what I would call a New Area Study. And no. I do not believe a formal one of those, which would typically take a year or so and cost tens of thousands of dollars, was done for Brown v. Board.

Interviewer: Okay. Alright. Well, I know one was done for Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Tuskegee, Alabama, so I just wondered if Brown v. Board –?

Given: There’s quite a history to the formal New Area Study process. There was a point in time, back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, when the Park Service was legislatively required to do a certain number of those a year. That was when there were Democratic administrations, and they were quite interested in expanding the Park Service, so that they required the Park Service to do a certain number of New Area Studies a year. That changed over time, and, at – once you started getting into the Republican administrations again, starting, with Reagan, they were not particularly interested in expanding the National Park System and viewed the New Area Studies in a different fashion. Unless a new area was strongly supported by a Republican delegation, they would transmit New Area Studies to Congress with a negative recommendation. Eventually, they stopped doing the studies altogether despite the legislative requirement, and, when New Area legislation was proposed, they would automatically testify against it, often using the lack of a New Area Study as the justification for the negative testimony. Kind of a Catch-22.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Okay. So, if you did a New Area study, and they said, “No, we don’t approve of that,” then –?

Given: Yeah, it’s – there may have been something done for Brown v. Board, a really quick and dirty thing that – where the – where the end product would have been a long letter. As I say, “We went down and looked at it, and this is what we think.” And a person who would remember that would be Sändra Washington.

Interviewer: Okay. Well, I did interview her. I may have to re-interview her because she keeps coming up in people’s interviews (laughs). She was the first site manager. Did you have anything with her – any, kind of, import or impact in getting her to be the first site manager?

Given: No, that would have been a higher level than me at that point in time, but I – you know, I was probably consulted and probably agreed to it, because, you know, Sändra was in one of the Divisions that worked for me.

Interviewer: Yeah. She claimed Don Castleberry tricked her into going. (Laughs)

Given: (Laughs) Yeah, that could be. That could be. And so, yeah, I would probably have been involved in the conversation with Castleberry and Bill Schenk as to what – they certainly would have approached me at the point, “We want to send Sändra down there. Is that okay with you?” And, when the Regional Director puts something that way, you generally don’t say “No.” But I wouldn’t have said, “No,” anyway. Sändra was great. She did an excellent job doing the early stuff that needed to be done and setting up the office in the Post Office building and stuff like that and working with the guy who owned the school. He was very – was very interested in the project and very supportive of turning it into a park, so he was pretty easy to work with. And Sändra worked a lot with him and, of course, Cheryl, those early days.

Interviewer: Right. So, did you have any input into setting up the temporary Visitor Contact Station in the – in the old Post Office, or was that her choice?

Given: She was the one, probably, who identified that as a possibility, and she would have probably come up to Omaha and made a presentation recommending it as our best option, and we agreed. She also would have worked very closely with the General Services Administration and they may well have recommended that.

Interviewer: Is that one of their facilities – buildings?

Given: Yes. Because they had – because they had room in it, and it would be better and cheaper for us to go there than to rent something else.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah. Right. When you first looked at Brown, did you have some idea of how long it was going to take before you could open it up as a park? Ten years?

Given: We knew it would be some time. We didn’t have a target year because how long it takes to get the money to do a project of that size is almost impossible to predict. In the case of Brown v. Board, the money came rather quickly. If you went and looked at all the relatively new parks and when they got their first major development projects, Brown got it really, really quickly, compared to most of them, which was good.

Interviewer: Okay, I had a question about – in the – I’m not sure if this was in the legislation, but, in the budget, there was a pretty sizeable line item for Brown versus – for the Brown Foundation – for them in their yearly line-item budget, and I wondered if you had any information – notion as to how that – how that occurred that the Brown Foundation got to be part of the Park Service’s budget.

Given: Well, I can tell you how it occurred, and I remember it now that you mention it, but I’m not remembering what, specifically, it was for. It might have been to rent the building from the owner or even purchase it from him.

Interviewer: Well, I – as I understood it, it was to do programming – educational programming.

Given: Oh, okay. Yes.

Interviewer: Okay, and then they had – they had an office in the building at – once the building opened.

Given: Yes, and – but how it happened was Cheryl coming up with the idea and suggesting to the delegation that that would be a good way to make this park work – was to give them money to do the educational programming. Because, after all – that’s what Brown Foundation did. It’s the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity.

Interviewer: Right. And so, this decision was made during the crafting of the legislation, I assume?

Given: Yes, the authority for the funding was put into the enabling legislation. The Park Service usually doesn’t get off the mark very well in funding the operations of new areas and probably wouldn’t have asked for appropriations for the educational programming, so Cheryl probably lobbied for the appropriations, also. That’s a little bit different. Yeah.

Interviewer: Now, if it was in the enabling legislation authorizing it, that meant that the Park Service had to do it, correct?

Given: (Long pause) No. We’re authorized to do it, and, by putting it there, it’s pretty clear that it’s Congress’s intent that we should do it, but we don’t have to do it unless they also appropriate money.

Interviewer: Oh, I see. So, I do understand that. So, it was in the enabling legislation to do it, which authorized doing it, but, unless Congress appropriated the funds to do it, you aren’t obliged to do it.

Given: You are correct. We wouldn’t have had to take money from Truman or the Arch to do it. You know, there would – there would have to be a Brown v. Board appropriation.

Interviewer: Right. Appropriations to do it. So, that means that, every year, while the Brown Foundation was associated with that park, Congress included that line item amount in the appropriation?

Given: Yes. It may have been a line item, but not necessarily. It could have just been that they let us know that “We have included this much for Brown, and we expect you to do that.” And that stuff doesn’t necessarily always get put into writing in legislation or in the appropriations bill. Sometimes it does. But sometimes a member of Congress tells the Director of the Park Service or even the Park Service’s lead budget person that this is what they intended, and that would have been enough to make it happen.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Okay. Well, Sherda Williams has told me that, once the relationship between Brown Foundation and the park dissolved, that line item was still in their budget. So, the line item was transferred to the park.

Given: Correct.

Interviewer: So, it – so, it sounds like it was a standard amount that was part of what Congress would have authorized – would authorize every year.

Given: Yes. Was she was still giving it to the Brown Foundation?

Interviewer: Yes. Well, they were getting – no. After the dissolution of the relationship, the line item amount was transferred into the park’s (pause) general budget? I’m not sure. I’m not sure.

Given: Yeah. That makes sense.

Interviewer: Okay. Alright. I was just trying to figure out this financial relationship here and figure out how it got that way and how it worked.

Given: (Laughs) There’s – that – the whole relationship with Cheryl and Brown Foundation was complicated, for sure. So, I think, maybe, we can talk more about that later.

Interviewer: Yeah. Okay, we’ve talked about your legislative – your involvement in the legislative effort to get the park established. Do you happen to have any – did you happen to have any sense of how the community perceived the proposed park at the time or later? For instance, were they glad that that building was going to become a park, or were they not receptive to that notion?

Given: I think the people who knew about it were supportive and happy. I’m not sure it was extremely well-publicized. The Brown Foundation worked, kind of, in a nationwide network of civil rights-related support groups, and it was – it was just as important for them – perhaps, even more important for them – to be working with all them to get support as it was the local support. Although Cheryl did have, like, local government. The mayor – the mayor was very supportive, is my recollection.

Interviewer: Mmm-hmm. City Council was supportive, I presume?

Given: Yes. I’m not sure the state government was particularly involved. I think it was the local government and the federal government and not so much the state. And there’s probably a reason that I may have noted at some point in time.

Interviewer: Well, I mean, what – how much involvement would the state have had in that whole process? They weren’t going to pay for it.

Given: Well, normally, it would be important in the legislative process for the state to support the creation of a new park within their state. And then – that was probably – was probably done. It’s just I don’t think they were as involved as many states were. I remember, for example, at Keweenaw, up in Michigan, the State Historic Preservation Officer was practically a team member with a lot of stuff having to do with Keweenaw. It wasn’t like that in Kansas.

Interviewer: Okay. So, it was mostly the local government officials and the federal –?

Given: And Cheryl working with the Congressional delegation to make this happen, yeah.

Interviewer: And the Brown Foundation. Right. Okay. But let’s talk about just your average person owning a home in the area. Do you happen to know how they felt about that? I mean, a lot of times – first of all, it’s an urban park, so, a lot of times, people in residential areas around an urban park worry about additional traffic, where are people going to park? Did you –?

Given: Yeah. I don’t remember that being a problem. And – but you’re right, there are often concerns like that, but, in the case of Brown v. Board, it was a school. It had a parking lot.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Okay. Big enough?

Given: And it actually had room to make more parking, if it was ever needed. But I think that the people – the people who cared in the neighborhood were proud that this story was going to emerge from their neighborhood. It was going to be told. It’s going to get national recognition.

Interviewer: Right. Their school.

Given: Yeah. Their school.

Interviewer: Their school. And speaking of “their school,” I know that the original effort was for Sumner Elementary School. But, somehow, it got bypassed because it was in even worse shape than Monroe School? I don’t know exactly why Sumner wasn’t part of this – wasn’t either the place or part of this legislation designation.

Given: The Sumner School was talked about quite a bit, and I don’t – and I’ll take your word for it – I don’t ever remember it being the main focus rather than Monroe.

Interviewer: Okay, well, Harry Butowsky did a Theme Study on sites that had importance to the Constitution, and, when he did that, he – his study was on Sumner School.

Given: Okay. A Theme Study is different than a New Area Study in that it is often looking nationwide for sites that relate to a specific theme. Theme Studies usually do, however, take a cursory look at the type of feasibility factors that are looked at in more detail in a New Area Study. In this case, I’m guessing that the Theme Study might have focused on Sumner at least in part because it was in much better condition than Monroe.

Interviewer: Right. And so, he was puzzled – I’ve interviewed him, and he was, at the time, puzzled as to – he thought that Sumner School would have been the one and wasn’t completely convinced that Monroe School should have been chosen over it. So, do you have any –?

Given: Well, I guess the simple reason is, it wasn’t us doing the choosing.

Interviewer: The Brown Foundation was picking one?

Given: Yes. I think Sumner School was in better condition than Monroe, but that it wasn’t necessarily available. After the establishment of Brown and once people saw what we did with Monroe School, then, all of a sudden, there was a lot of interest in adding Sumner School. In fact, one of your later questions [in the preliminary list of questions sent to him prior to this interview] was, “What were you proud of?” you know. And I think one of the, kind of, behind the scenes things that I was involved in was discouraging efforts to add Sumner School to Brown v. Board because we certainly didn’t need two schools to tell the story. And it would have been really expensive to make Sumner –

Interviewer: Yeah, you didn’t need two sites to manage.

Given: Yeah, and we didn’t need more space to tell the story. We’d been – the job that was done on Monroe School was wonderful. And, yeah, I can see, you know, people saying, “Oh, listen – hey, wouldn’t it be neat if we could do that to Sumner School, too?” But, from the Park Service standpoint, there was not a need to.

Interviewer: The answer was, “No!” (Laughs)

Given: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. So, did you have – were you involved in any way in any of the planning documents, like – did you do an EA, and did you – and the General Management Plan and those sort of things?

Given: No, but that – by that point, I wasn’t – Interviewer: Well, I know you didn’t do it specifically (laughs).

Given: I was in management by then.

Interviewer: Mmm-hmm. But, even so, that took ten years. You didn’t – it didn’t open until 2004 for – to the public. So, there was a whole lot of planning going on before.

Given: Yeah, a project on that scale takes years. I don’t recall how many years it took, though.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah. Well, I know I worked just on the restoration of Tuskegee Airmen for seven years, myself, so – and that was after a lot of the planning documents had been completed.

Given: Yes. One reason Steve Adams was selected as superintendent was because we knew we were going to get the restoration money by that point in time and we thought he would be a very good person to oversee the line item construction project.

Interviewer: (Laughs) I think he actually said that was his function in the National Park Service, was to go to projects – parks that were about to be reconstructed or restored and be the park superintendent during that period. And why did you think that about him?

Given: We need to talk about the whole sequence of Superintendents and why some of it happened. Do you want me to do that now?

Interviewer: Alright. Yes, that would be awesome. So, we started – you started with Sändra?

Given: So, we started with Sändra, and Sändra was detailed to do that because someone needed to be detailed to be the on-site manager. I don’t know. But you probably met Tom Richter, at some point?

Interviewer: Oh, yes!

Given: Yeah, Tom Richter was the person who was detailed to Harry S Truman at the start, right after we got it, to do those initial things. But there’s an unfortunate problem with new parks and superintendents. And it has to do with how the federal government grades positions. And it grades superintendencies, to a large degree, based on the size of the budget you oversee and the number of people you are supervising. So, the superintendencies for new parks tend to grade out at – as the lowest, entry-level superintendent, when new parks are really complicated. I mean –

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s the hard part!

Given: Yes. So – now, sometimes you get lucky, and you find a person – find a person that will be a rising star in the Park Service and will do a wonderful job as the first superintendent, but you’re just as likely to be picking someone at that grade level who, it’s their first superintendency, and they’re learning as they go, and, frankly, are in over their head. In the case of Brown v. Board, because of the theme, there was some benefit to picking a Black superintendent. Also because of the theme, we were more likely to get Black applicants. So, the first two real superintendents that applied for the job and were selected, Bess Sherman and Ray Harper, were both first-time superintendents, although Bessie was a unit manager before she went to Brown v. Board. And Bessie did fine. But she was learning as she went. Ray Harper had – again, I would say he did not do as good a job as Bessie did – and, in part, because he had other interests in life, and he eventually left the Park Service and became a minister.

Interviewer: Right. And still is.

Given: Yeah, and he’s probably a great minister. (Laughter) But – was he one you interviewed? Interviewer: I tried to, but he did not respond. And I also tried to interview Bessie, but she refused.

She said she did not – did not want to do that. So, no amount of – Given: Huh. Where is she today?

Interviewer: She is in Maryland, and she is also a pastor. So, I was interested by the fact that the two people that I contacted who both were not interested in doing this had both gone into the ministry.

Given: Yeah, now that you mention it, I think I knew that about Bessie, also.

Interviewer: So, did you want to tell me what the problems were, or was it just inexperience and –?

Given: With Bessie, there wasn’t a particular problem. It just was it was a complicated job, and she didn’t have the experience that would have helped her to take on a newly authorized area. We should have a had a higher rated, more experienced person, but that’s not the way the system worked. With Ray, he seemed to only have – and this is my impression – he seemed to only have half a mind on that job – on the job, and he – part of it may have had to do with geography, that he was not comfortable – this wasn’t his part of the country.

Interviewer: He wasn’t comfortable in Kansas?

Given: Yes. The – but we eventually – (laughs) I’m – I’ll say this, maybe, stronger than I mean, but our Regional Director, Bill Schenk, twisted the Regional Director’s arm in the Southeast Region to take Ray for a job down there.

Interviewer: (Laughs) He still lives in Florida.

Given: Yeah. And, not as much with Bessie, but with Ray, Cheryl was unhappy.

Interviewer: Oh! Okay. What was she –?

Given: And one thing I remember vividly is that she told us, when Ray left, and we needed to fill the position again, that – something to the effect of, “I don’t require a Black superintendent. I want the best superintendent you can give me.” And that’s why we sent Steve Adams there at that point in time, because we thought he was the right person for what the park was going to be doing in the next couple of years. And it – I mean, it worked out. It also may be that – I mean, Steve was at that grade level but was going to advance. And in fact, we were able to get him a grade higher than Bessie and Ray had been, based on the complexity of the line-item construction project. So, we were able to give him a promotion to come to Brown v. Board. He did a wonderful job there, and then he moved on to even more complicated jobs, such as being in charge of the Lewis and Clark Trail during the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and eventually being Associate Regional Director for us for Cultural Resources in the Midwest Regional Office.

Interviewer: Right. So, he was one of those rising stars?

Given: Yes. And thank you for sending me the listing for the sequence of Superintendents. I would have put Cheryl Brown Henderson next, before Dennis Vasquez, but you listed Cheryl Brown Henderson as serving for six months in 2010.

Interviewer: Well, that’s what she had told me. She said she was only there six months.

Given: Okay. Yeah, she wasn’t there that long. I definitely recall that, at some point, she decided that she wanted to be – she thought maybe it was the right time for her to be Superintendent, and that would have been after the building was restored and with all the exhibits in. So, while we made no promises to her, we advertised the Superintendent’s job both inside the NPS and to the public at large so she could apply. When we reviewed the applications, she was, by far, the best applicant, and we hired her. We knew she would need to be given a crash course on the variety of federal systems that would be new to her – personnel, budget, and so on. And while we attempted to do that, we unfortunately weren’t successful enough, because she had trouble separating her responsibilities from the Brown Foundation and her responsibilities and all the “you can do this and can’t do that’s” that came along with being a federal employee.

Interviewer: Okay. Yeah, I was going to say, the Park Service, along with, I’m sure, other federal agencies, have their own culture of how are – things are done. And I was quite surprised that you brought in somebody from the outside who wasn’t familiar with that.

Given: Yes. Coming in at the Superintendent level isn’t easy. For example, she had employees in the Brown Foundation, but it was, only one or two. So she didn’t have a lot of supervisory experience, and she was doing things that really weren’t by the book with respect to Human Resources stuff, budget stuff, and we decided – again, after a relatively short period, that this was a nice experiment, we’re glad we tried it, but, I think, we both agreed that it didn’t –

Interviewer: Work well? Okay. When you first hired her, did you give her any kind of training?

Given: I believe we sent her to training courses, brought her into the Regional Office to talk with staff in a variety of disciplines, and more, but there was so much that she didn’t know with regard to federal Human Resources, how the systems worked, how our budgets worked, and things like that.

Interviewer: Yeah, like, Park Service employees get ethics training every year, pretty much, and she hadn’t been in the Park Service. I mean – so, she didn’t get any of that background training about how to – how to manage different aspects of being –

Given: Yeah, at this point in time, it was, maybe, getting a little better with respect to the grade. The superintendent’s grade was up a level from initially, but what we really needed to help Cheryl was a superstar administrative officer. And we had one, briefly, but she left. I – and her name was Teri Gage, I believe.

Interviewer: Oh, Teri Gage. Yeah, Teri Perry Gage. So, she left during Cheryl’s superintendency? Given: Yeah. Well, she had a – and I’m not going to swear my recollection is perfect, you know, but what I’m remembering is that she was part Native American, and her tribe was in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and she had family – a family need to get back to the Upper Peninsula. So, she – the opportunity came up of – there was a vacancy for the AO at Pictured Rocks, and she was really good. It was not a surprise to anybody that she was selected for the job.

Interviewer: Right. She took it. Okay. And so, she left – she left, like, right before – during – in 2010, like, before –?

Given: I don’t remember the exact timing, but I’m pretty sure she was probably there, or she might have even been gone before Cheryl became Superintendent, in which case, the problem was that she was gone and not still there.

Interviewer: Yeah. And so, the person who would have been directing the administration functions was –?

Given: I know they did get another really good AO at some point, and that was Marty Sutherland, who became our Regional Budget Officer, later (laughter). if either Teri or Marty was the AO when Cheryl was there, they probably kept things from being worse than they were, but I just don’t remember the timing. I guess we should return to Dennis Vasquez. I’m not remembering for sure whether he was moved to Brown v. Board at upper management’s request. I’m afraid I may be confusing this with another placement situation that occurred around the same time, and I’m thinking that Dennis applied for the job after Steve Adams left. He was well qualified, having been a superintendent in a couple places by this time, but he came in with a bit of baggage.

Interviewer: Baggage? (Laughs)

Given: Yeah. I mean, we had frank conversations that, “You need to leave this behind you,” and I think he did.

Interviewer: Okay. Alright. And then –?

Given: Yeah, Dennis was good, very, very bright. If he hadn’t gotten himself in trouble, he could have been a Regional Director someday. But, yeah, he was good and having him at Brown v. Board was useful because of his experience. He was not in over his head, and he did a fine job for the park, as far as I knew. Now, he and Cheryl were the last Superintendents that I had any involvement in selecting. As I think I told you, I was a little surprised by what David Smith said to you, and – I mean, it could be I’m just not remembering that, but I retired in 2010.

Interviewer: Okay. And he didn’t start until 2012? Given: He didn’t start until 2010.

Interviewer: Okay, yeah. So, he would have started – he came – in the – in the chronology that we have, he actually came right after Cheryl. That – Dennis was right before Cheryl, then Cheryl, and then Dave. Okay, so that ends your interactions with Superintendents at the park, and that, you know, provides the explanation for Steve Adams’ selection, right?

Given: Yes.

Interviewer: Okay. What would you say – let’s go to – what would you say were the biggest challenges to achieving that – what you were expecting from the park?

Given: Well, I mean, the biggest one, by far, the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, if you will – it was actually restoring the building.

Interviewer: The building? So –

Given: Yeah, it – I mean, it was – it was a lot of work, and it was going to cost a lot of money.

And it did cost a lot of money.

Interviewer: Yeah. What do you remember about that?

Given: They – the – I think the theme of the park helped it along in getting a reasonably high priority for the line item money. It also helped – well, the – once we had the building restored and all the exhibits in and everything, we needed – the park’s budget needed a huge bump to actually staff the building and run it. And we did get the operating funds needed– the Regional Directors, as a group, set national priorities for several important programs – national priorities for line-item construction projects and for park operating increases, and Brown v. Board was an easy sell to that group. And so, they got the line- item project, as I said, faster than a lot of new parks get money, and once the project was done, they were very amenable to giving the park a big operating increase to properly staff the new facility.

Interviewer: Okay. Did you go to the Grand Opening?

Given: Yes. I didn’t have a speaking role. (Laughter) I mean, people like Steven Breyer and President Bush were there. But I was – but I was sure there. And I got to shake the hands of both the President and the Associate Justice. It was one of the high points of my career.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Oh, good for you! I’m so glad to hear that! So, were you pleased with the preservation – the rehabilitation efforts? Was there –?

Given: Yes. And both the technical stuff, cultural resources stuff, and trying to get the building right, the way it was, I think we did an excellent job, but the exhibits were fantastic. Harpers Ferry Center did a wonderful job.

Interviewer: They did a wonderful job?

Given: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. I wonder if we have – have we pretty much covered your interactions with the Brown Foundation, or was there some – were there some other events that we need to talk about?

Given: No, nothing specific. I had a good relationship with Cheryl when she was –

Interviewer: A lot of people say that.

Given: Yeah. She would not hesitate to call me when she was having – had an issue with something going on, and I would help her when I could and – or explain to her why I couldn’t. And she generally – I think she generally trusted me because I’d been involved in it a long time, and, you know, as I said, I think we had a good relationship, and we were honest and trusting of each other.

Interviewer: And then you retired at the same time, approximately, that she stopped being the superintendent and the relationship between the Park Service and the Brown Foundation disintegrated. Were you involved with that?

Given: I’m not remembering the disintegration.

Interviewer: Okay, so, that happened after you left, probably?

Given: I think so. Cheryl had an office in the school for – after the restoration. What happened with the dissolution of the relationship?

Interviewer: Well, with the OIG investigation. Were you aware of that? Given: Oh, okay. Yes. So, I think that had started when I was still there. Interviewer: Okay. So, I think that was probably the –

Given: Oh, yeah. We probably did whatever it told us to do, because that’s what we generally do with OIG investigations.

Interviewer: Yeah. Right. Okay. Were there any times that you remember that you had to navigate difficult or delicate situations related to park development or administration?

Given: Umm – (long pause).

Interviewer: I mean, other than talking to Dennis on a regular basis (laughs). I’m kidding. (Laughter) Given: Well, actually, it wasn’t really on a regular basis. It was “These are your ground rules. We don’t want to see this ever happen again.” (Laughter)

Interviewer: Did you have to do those – did you have to do those – have those kind of talks also with Bessie and Ray because they were new superintendents and, maybe, didn’t know all of the ground rules?

Given: No, not the same way. I mean, we – yeah, we had – certainly had conversations with them and tried to provide them all the assistance they needed to succeed as new superintendents, but no. This was just something in – something Dennis had done in the past that was inappropriate, and we didn’t want him to do it again in the future. Made that clear to him.

Interviewer: Okay. So, those discussions were individualized for each of the superintendents, what you – what kind of directions you gave them?

Given: Yes.

Interviewer: Did you usually give directives to incoming superintendents? Not you, specifically, but the – you know, the Regional Director – well, I guess you, specifically!

Given: We would – we would usually bring the new superintendents up to the Regional Office and – for a couple days. And, you know, we’d set up a schedule for them to meet with all the – all the Associate Regional Directors, and then we’d have a sit-down with the Deputy and the Regional Director to kind of get their marching orders on what we thought was most important, and what to pay attention to, and things like that.

Interviewer: Okay. Did it differ from superintendent to superintendent in Brown v. Board, or was it pretty much a standard, “This is what we want you to focus on?”

Given: Parts were standard, and parts were park specific, depending on the issues facing the park.

Interviewer: Okay. So, for instance, Sherda said that she was told that the Regional – the Region wanted her to focus on outreach to children and – educational outreach to children, and – was that a pretty much – pretty standard directive for that park?

Given: Not necessarily. The – I mean, we told – we told Steve Adams that his job was to make sure that the line-item project went smoothly, and while our educational mission is always important, focusing specifically on children was probably the result of something that had been noticed or reported to us. At a different time, it might have been, “We need you to improve relationships with park neighbors.” Yeah, or, “Our cultural resource folk are hearing from the State Historic Preservation Officer that you never talk to them, and, even if you don’t have anything to say, since you’re in the same town, you should go visit them every other month.” Anything, from little things like that to, with Steve Adams, “You have a ten-million-dollar project, and we want it to come out right!” (Laughs).

Interviewer: (Laughs) “So, do that!”

Given: (Laughs) Yeah, “So, yeah, do that for us, please!”

Interviewer: (Laughs) Okay. Do you remember that you brought Cheryl up for the – when she became superintendent?

Given: I don’t specifically remember, but it would have been even more important with Cheryl, so I presume we did.

Interviewer: Okay. Well, we have talked about some of the major projects on the site during your tenure, which would have been – I mean your tenure with the Park Service – which would have been establishing the Visitor Contact Center, rehabilitation of the facilities, the Grand Opening, which actually happened way before the park actually opened, and then the Dedication in 2004. Were there any other major milestones that you can think of that you were involved in?

Given: (Pause) No.

Interviewer: No? Okay. So, how did budgets affect the management and development of the park.

Given: Well, as I said, Brown v. Board had an easier time of it than most new parks.

Interviewer: They had a big budget?

Given: They got an adequate budget faster than most new parks are able to. Getting the operating funds to staff the park after the building was a huge plus for the park. That is always a challenge with new facilities, and the – I’m contrasting that with Homestead. Homestead was a much more difficult sell to get them more money when – after the new Visitor Center was built. And other parks don’t necessarily have an event like, “We’ve now restored the school and put exhibits in it, and we need to open, and we need this many people to do it.” Other new parks are more likely to get nickel-and-dime type increases, small ones to create one new position at a time or hire three seasonals rather than – rather than to get a big chunk at once. So budget wasn’t as big a challenge with Brown as it was – as it is with other new parks. We have a lot of experience in the Midwest with new parks. Every one is a little different, but Brown v. Board, Tallgrass, Nicodemus, all in Kansas, and Minuteman Missile, Keweenaw, Dayton, Ulysses S. Grant, Clinton, Little Rock Central High – and I’m missing some – elsewhere in the Midwest Region all had different levels of challenges and timeframes in getting to a comfortable level of operational funding. We had quite a few new parks added to the system during my tenure. In fact, I got a Department of the Interior Meritorius Service Award for my role in assisting with the legislation and establishment of so many new units.

Interviewer: Oh, okay. So, you got, like, a Lifetime Achievement Award, huh?

Given: Yes.

Interviewer: Okay. So, that was – that was for your role in establishing a lot of new parks?

Given: That was a major part of the justification.

Interviewer: Okay. So, we’re down to the last couple of questions. With the work that you’ve done at Brown v. Board, what are you – what would you say you are most proud of doing?

Given: (Long pause) Well, getting the preservation-restoration project and the exhibits done was the big thing. And the – what I listed on my notes were – the other thing, I already mentioned was the non-visible, and, probably, very few people know about, was, I did a lot over a period of a year or two discouraging Sumner School, discouraging members of Congress and others who thought it would be a great idea to put Sumner School into the park. And we just –

Interviewer: (Laughs) You fought that off? (Laughter)

Given: Yes. I was one of the people fighting it off, and I think that was important because, what would have happened is, we would have gotten the responsibility for Sumner School. We wouldn’t have gotten the priority to restore it, and we wouldn’t have gotten any more money to run it, so we would have had to take people from Monroe School and send them over to Sumner School, and it would have, kind of, ended up doing a – excuse my French – a half-assed job at both places.

Interviewer: (Laughs) So, this way, you can concentrate all the – they can concentrate all their resources on the one, small location that tells the whole story, anyway?

Given: Yes. Exactly.

Interviewer: Okay. Alright. So, basically, the thing you’re most proud of is something you prevented from having – from happening? (Laughter)

Given: No, now, the most proud is the advocacy for the big project. But the one that people don’t know about is the Sumner school thing.

Interviewer: (Laughs) Okay. So, we’ve talked about a lot of different things. Was there something that you wanted to talk about Brown v. Board that I haven’t asked you about?

Given: Well, I’m having – the last thing on my notes here (pause) – the only other thing that I have jotted down is to make sure you know about another person who was involved at the beginning that they might not have put on your interview list, and that’s Robin White.

Interviewer: I did interview her. Yes, I interviewed her May, the 8th. Yes, she did the interpretive stuff.

Given: Okay. Excellent. Yeah, because she played a role in the early interpretive stuff. And I’m not remembering the exact timing, but she would have kept up with Brown v. Board and what’s happening there. She – I assume she hasn’t retired yet.

Interviewer: No. She’s in – she’s in Little Rock.

Given: She’s still in Little Rock?

Interviewer: Yes.

Given: Yeah, it’s a similar civil rights theme, and I think she might have as good a grasp as anyone on what has happened in – to Brown v. Board over time just because she’s interested in it.

Interviewer: And keeps track of it?

Given: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. Yes, I did interview her, and I had interviewed her before, so I already – you know, I was already familiar with her, so it was good to go and talk about a different park, just as it’s good to see you again and talk about a different park! (Laughs)

Given: Did you interview her for Tuskegee or –?

Interviewer: No, for her – well, we did Brown – we did Little Rock Central for Robin and also Brown v. Board, yeah.

Given: Oh, well, okay. Yeah, she was down South for a while, too. I think, maybe, Jean Lafitte?

Interviewer: Yes, she was down in Jean Lafitte, yeah, in New Orleans [Correction: she was at New Orleans Jazz]. Yep. And now she’s holding down Little Rock (laughs). So, I appreciate your taking the time to tell me about how things worked – especially about how things – it’s interesting – it’s helpful to know how the Park Service expects things to work, and, sometimes, we don’t quite get that perspective. So, I do really appreciate you telling me how you saw it working and your experiences with getting Brown v. Board up and running, and preserved, and rehabilitated, and exhibited, and staffed. So, thank you very much! I’m going to turn this off.

Given: Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW