A week ago, the National Park Service announced that Barclay Trimble, deputy superintendent at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, will replace Mike Murray as superintendent of the Outer Banks Group, including the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
Murray retired at the end of July, and Trimble will start his new job in late October. In the meantime, deputy superintendent Darrell Echols is managing the park operations as acting superintendent.
From the NPS news release, we know that Trimble has had a 21-year career with the Park Service and has spent most of that time in business and finance operations.
He has been recreation fee manager for the Intermountain Region, chief of finance for the Washington Office Concessions Division, acting chief of business management at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and a management assistant at Denali National Park in Alaska and the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, D.C.
He has been deputy superintendent at Grand Canyon, one the of nation?s premier national parks, since 2007, and also served as acting superintendent for seven months, supervising 535 employees.
He graduated from the University of Texas in 1989 with a bachelor?s degree in business administration and accounting.
Trimble will be arriving at Cape Hatteras National Seashore at a time when unhappiness with the Park Service is at an all-time high and community relations are at an all-time low after the long and excruciating process to devise an off-road vehicle regulation.
That regulation became effective Feb 15, and is already being challenged by a lawsuit and an effort to pass a bill in Congress to overturn it.
Rightly or wrongly, many folks on Hatteras and Ocracoke blame Mike Murray for what they see as a final ORV regulation that favors the demands of outside environmental groups over the needs of local communities.
The tone that Barclay Trimble sets in his first weeks and months here will be crucial.
So, naturally, we want to know more about him.
I e-mailed Trimble earlier this week, requesting an interview if he is here at any time before he takes over or by phone.
The good news is that he replied in a timely manner. However, he really doesn?t want to do an interview until he is here.
Here is what he wrote to me:
Irene,
Thank you for your warm wishes and sorry for my delayed response. My family and I are looking forward to our upcoming move to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in October. In the interim, Darrell Echols continues to be the Acting Superintendent and I would direct any inquiries to him until I am relocated and more familiar with park issues for Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Again, thank you for your interest and I look forward to meeting you at one of the park’s media roundtable events upon my arrival.
Barclay
I can?t blame him for not wanting to address park issues before he even arrives, but I was hoping for an interview that would reveal a few more personal details.
So I made some phone calls and did an Internet search.
And there?s really not much out there to reveal anything about Barclay Trimble. What is out there is pretty standard and not too interesting, but, then, that?s not all bad. He?s got more or less a clean slate.
I did find out a few things:
- He is from Portland, Texas, and graduated from Gregory-Portland High School in 1984.
- In college, he was selected as Mr. UTSA in 1987. According to the university?s website, this award recognizes students ?who embody the spirit of UTSA while striving for the highest levels of academic achievement, campus involvement, and community service.?
- He?s in his early 40s and is married. His wife?s name is Lana. They apparently have several young children.
- He has a Facebook page that has very little information on it and nothing much on the ?wall? but does feature cute photos of the children.
- He is mentioned in a few Park Service releases, but not many. There is one from when he was named deputy superintendent at Grand Canyon in 2007 and a few others that reference him about the controversy over the use of mules on the park?s trails and the issue of plastic water bottles.
- One release notes, ?Trimble has a very strong background in the areas of financial management, accounting, the Federal Lands Recreational Fee Act (FLREA) Program and the NPS Concessions Management Program.?
- Cyndy Holda, the seashore?s public affairs specialist, says he hasn?t met him yet, but knows of him from her time at parks out west. When his appointment was announced, he called to talk with the Outer Banks staff.
And that?s about it.
So there you have it. There are apparently no red flags in Trimble?s background.
There are some in our communities whose resentment of the Park Service has grown to the degree that they may never have an open mind again to anyone from the NPS. I don?t condone the anti-NPS sentiments on our islands. I can understand that the traditional and historical uses of our beaches have changed in major ways and that some of our businesses have suffered, no matter what NPS and the environmental groups say about the rosy economic picture here.
However, I hope most of us will keep an open mind about Barclay Trimble until we have met him, heard him, and seen what he does in his first months here.
We probably will never return to the ways things were with beach access and relationships with the Park Service. But we can try to work with this new superintendent to change what we can and live with what we can?t change in the best way possible.
I, for one, am looking forward to meeting Barclay Trimble.
