Lifelong Experiences and Memories

From left to right: Superintendent Clark, Myself, Chief Murphy,
Mr. Luongo.

Hello All. Hope everyone is having as much fun this summer as I am here at GETT. This past week started off with a visit from one of our instructors Mr. Anthony Luongo. When Mr. Luongo arrived Monday morning, the first thing that I thought would be fitting to show him was our film and cyclorama, which shows and illustrates the civil war, and what happened here at Gettysburg. After we were done the film, we had a meeting with the Superintendent of Gettysburg, Superintendent Ed Clark, as well as with my Chief Ranger Jeremy Murphy. During this meeting, we discussed my progression so far this summer, and how the program itself has grown over the years, and if there is any way we could get more involved during the school year at local national parks, which I feel went very well and am excited to see where it goes in the future. During the meeting, we also presented both Superintendent Clark and Chief Murphy with a ProRanger challenge coin, polo shirt, and a few other goodies. We also presented to them, with thanks from another one of our instructors, Mrs. McGarvey, plaques for being participating parks, including one from this year. At the conclusion of the meeting, we all got a picture together in front of the arrowhead with the plaque, with smile to go around. Just think it wasn’t even lunch yet and we were having a tremendous day!

Left to Right: Ranger Morgan, Myself, Mr. Luongo

After the meeting, we then went back to the Ranger office, to have a more one on one conversation with Chief Murphy and ask a few other questions. But first, Mr. Luongo had to reunite with a former ProRanger that has now gotten a full time job at GETT, Morgan Brooks. Mr. Luongo was very happy to see her, and how she was doing, and the occasion called for some pictures in front of her newly washed patrol car! After all of this, Mr. Luongo and I went to get lunch, then meet up with my direct supervisor, Ranger Doug Murphy (no relation). Again we discussed how I was doing, and just had a casual talk about the park and other things going on within the program and inside NPS itself, being its centennial year! The rest of the day was spent giving Mr. Luongo the tour of the park, which I can tell he thoroughly enjoyed, and will remember for quite a while. We said our goodbyes at the end of the day, as he would be heading to Antietam the next day to visit Angelo!

The rest of the week, I finished up my final couple of days with maintenance. I worked in the office with Jessica Walde, who showed me what PMIS consists of, and how parks go through with applying to get budget money for projects they need money to do. All of what she taught me gave me a greater knowledge of just how hard it is to get money approved, and the amount of paperwork it takes to put a packet together to send in to the system where it will then get ranked and wait approval for up to a couple years later, depending on the ranking it is given. Jessica also showed me some other projects throughout the park that were going on that I hadn’t seen yet, and let me briefly talk to the workers to get a better feel for exactly what it was they were doing.

Paperwork for input into FMSS

My final two days I spent with Angel DeJesus Jr. learning the ins and outs of FMSS, which is a program used to track costs related to projects, labor hours, and much more related to the spending and tracking of anything being worked on in park whether it relates to money or labor. With his supervision, I was able to enter a couple into the system to see exactly what needs to be inputted to track all of it. It was a great learning experience, and am very lucky that it was Angel who got to teach me the system. To end the week, we had a company picnic, which brought everyone together for a great time, and was a time for everyone to get updated on major things that would be coming up in the park! I say it was a great end to yet another amazing, learning filled, fun filled experience at Gettysburg National Military Park! Stay tuned for more on next week, as it will be with our LE Rangers!