Changing Attitudes: Women with Disabilities Who Built Park Service Careers

Most women with disabilities whom the National Park Service hired in the 1970s and early 1980s held temporary jobs, but some built long careers. They started before the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and lived through the changes it brought — yet it was their own work and commitment that kept changing the attitudes of coworkers and visitors.

The Park Service notes that the language used about disability has changed, and that it keeps older terms only in titles, direct quotations or where they are essential to the point.

Martha Chapman, Ocmulgee

Martha Chapman was deaf and did not speak, which made arranging interviews, asking about applications and explaining her skills hard; she had been out of work for 16 years when the Park Service hired her in 1984 as a custodian at Ocmulgee National Monument (now Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park). Supervisors and colleagues praised her and her work ethic. In 1998 park staff helped her qualify for a Habitat for Humanity house, and many helped build it on their own time. That year the park was named "Small Employer of the Year" by the Mayor's Commission for Disability Issues and "Employer of the Year" by the Deaf Awareness Committee for supporting her. She worked there at least 15 years and was still there in 1999; no photographs of her have been found.

Cathy Lennon Ingram, curator

Cathy Lennon Ingram graduated in 1975 from Gallaudet College, a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C., and joined the Park Service in 1978 as an interpreter at the Old Stone House in Washington, demonstrating 1700s life in sign language and a period costume. She became museum curator at Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, where among other work she coordinated conservation of 2,000 books. Throughout her career she opened doors for deaf interns and volunteers — an apprentice program for girls aged 10 to 14 at the Old Stone House, and collections internships as curator, including one for Gallaudet student Suzanne Warwick in 2009. She retired in 2011.

Cathy Ingram signing with visitors at the Old Stone House, 1981. NPS History Collection.

Lynda Boose, Isle Royale

Lynda Anne Reynolds, who is blind, attended the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston and Orange Coast College, and earned a sociology degree at Pepperdine University. She was teaching children with disabilities in California in 1985 when she met Isle Royale ranger Doug Boose, assigned as her sighted guide at a Colorado ski event; they married in 1986. The next summer she heard the park needed a part-time dispatcher, talked to the chief ranger about how she could do the job, and was hired two days a week. Looking back, she believed living on the island put her in the right place at the right time, and that she would not have been hired through the usual process; she remembered Chief Ranger Stu Croll as a supportive advocate who treated her like any other ranger.

In 1988 she became the permanent, if furlough-subject, dispatcher — and that year skied for the United States at the Fourth World Winter Games for the Disabled in Innsbruck, Austria, the only completely blind woman Nordic skier on the U.S. team, finishing seventh in the 10K and eighth in the 5K with her husband as guide.

As dispatcher she handled park and marine radio traffic and phones, relayed messages from emergency medical technicians and called doctors during emergencies, took the mail to the boat that came three times a week, and tracked lost and found. She used a talking computer, a Braille writer and an Optacon for reading print, and labeled the mailboxes in Braille. Around 1997 the couple, who had spent six months a year on the island and the rest in Houghton, Michigan, moved to town full time, and she worked in the visitor center, planning trips, taking reservations for the park boat Ranger III and running the register — with visitors' help until a talking register arrived. Her guide dog, Blondie, went everywhere with her, including hikes throughout the park. Proud of her uniform, she marked the back of her name tag in Braille so she would never wear it upside down. She retired around 2003, after more than 15 years, and inspired a character in Nevada Barr's 1994 novel A Superior Death.

Erin Broadbent, first superintendent in a wheelchair

Erin Broadbent grew up in the Park Service — her father, Jack Broadbent, served 32 years and was superintendent of Tonto National Monument, and she lived at Crater Lake and Carlsbad Caverns. In August 1977, the week before college, a swimming-hole accident left her paralyzed from the chest down with limited use of her left hand. Told what she could no longer do, she resolved to find out what she could; expected to spend a year in the hospital, she left after four months.

She entered Arizona State University in 1978, largely for its accessible campus, volunteered at Montezuma Castle National Monument in 1980, was hired part time there in 1981, and graduated in recreation resource planning in 1982. At Tumacacori National Historical Park that year she became the first woman with a disability in its split administration–interpretation job, winning her first promotion after 90 days. In May 1984 she moved to President's Park as lead park technician organizing White House grounds tours, again the first woman with a disability in the post. A coworker, Regina Jones-Underwood, recalled that she refused offers to let others cover for her in bad weather, insisting the job was hers. In a 1985 oral history Broadbent said she was proud to be seen in uniform, pushed back on those who said accessibility cost too much, and rejected the idea that she owed her job to her wheelchair rather than her abilities.

Ranger skills class, fall 1985; Erin Broadbent is front row, far right. NPS Horace M. Albright Training Center.

After ranger skills training in 1985, she left President's Park in 1986 — with a 20-minute Oval Office visit with President Ronald Reagan as the Secret Service's going-away present. She coordinated the NPS Federal Women's Program in the 1980s, organized tours for foreign officials planning national parks in the International Affairs Office, and in 1992 became site manager of the National Mall, running events such as a presidential inaugural and the Fourth of July fireworks. In 1999, at 40, she became Kings Mountain National Military Park's first woman superintendent and the first wheelchair user promoted to superintendent anywhere in the Park Service. Her philosophy, as she put it then, was never to put up roadblocks for herself: she still did everything she had before, just differently. She retired in 2014.

Erin Broadbent at a wheelchair-accessible cabin in Prince William Forest Park. NPS History Collection.

Shirley Beccue, universal interpretation

A toboggan accident in her senior year at Northern Illinois University left Shirley Anne Beccue paraplegic. After a year in the hospital she finished an art education degree at the University of Illinois, chosen for its accessibility, then ran a nursery school in Florida for 10 years, where children's frank curiosity about disability helped her get past her awkwardness. At 34, in 1979, she became a part-time seasonal naturalist at Everglades National Park "on a trial basis"; the flat ground and boardwalks suited her manual wheelchair, and the job became a permanent interpreter post. In 1983 she led the upgrade of a backcountry "chickee" into an accessible campsite.

Ranger skills class, spring 1985; Shirley Beccue is front row, far right. NPS Horace M. Albright Training Center.

At the 1985 ranger skills course at Grand Canyon she was, by her recollection, the first paraplegic to rappel in its search-and-rescue training, and she did the zip line, carry-out drills, law enforcement scenarios and fire hose work, feeling fully part of the group. Park housing was fitted with ramps, and a maintenance worker made her a claw-tipped stick to reach the air conditioner controls. She trained rangers in inclusive programs, and in May 1989 moved to Acadia National Park as supervisory park ranger — both parks fitted hand controls to government vehicles for her. At Acadia she started the artist-in-residence program and ran yearly access training: don't talk while walking, watch for people straining to see or hear, get level with listeners, adjust to the group, and above all ask rather than assume. She became assistant chief of interpretation, and she retired around 2005.

Moving forward

These women showed that people with disabilities could hold meaningful Park Service jobs and excel in them, changing coworkers' attitudes and opening doors for others. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 brought more protections and more opportunities for the women who followed.

Sources

Rewritten from the National Park Service article "Changing Attitudes" (public domain; research supported in part by the National Park Foundation), in hubnx's own words; quotations from interviews and a newspaper are paraphrased. The article says Cathy Ingram joined the Park Service in 1978 and retired in 2011 "after 36 years of service"; the page gives the dates only.

• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.