Jennifer Smith, “Hometown” Superintendent of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park
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[intro music] Dave: Welcome to My Park Story, presented by the National Park Service. People form connections with their favorite national parks and programs, and this park-cast is a place to come together and share those stories. I’m your host, Dave Barak. Today's guest is Jen Smith, the Superintendent of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.
[intro music fades out] Dave: Hi, Jen. How are you?
Jen: Hi, Dave. I'm doing great today. What an honor to be here with you today to be able to tell my park story.
Dave: So let's get into it. Tell us your story.
Jen: Excellent. This is one of my favorite stories to tell, actually. So I'm chatting with you today from New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford is just south of Boston on the south coast of Massachusetts. It's absolutely gorgeous out there today and New Bedford is my hometown. And yes, my title is Superintendent. And you don't often hear those two things together. Like, I feel a little bit like an anomaly in the park service. The fact that, you know, I sort of have made these great things happen in my hometown. I am just incredibly proud to have enjoyed this incredible body of work and all the opportunities and challenges I have had here in New Bedford through my work with the park service in a place that I love.
Dave: How did you get started because, If I'm remembering correctly, there was no park when you got started at New Bedford Whaling.
Jen: My connection to this national park starts the year, within a year, of its creation here in New Bedford. So New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park was created by Congress in 1996 in November of ‘96. In June of ‘97, I was I was a stay-at-home mom. I had three kids. I was going to university at night, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I knew this national park had been created in New Bedford, but I didn't really know what that meant. I'd been following along with the grassroots efforts and the community members here who really came together to make it happen. So I was watching from the periphery. And so I decided to wander down to a building that had been serving as a visitor center for the city of New Bedford, understanding full well this transition was going on. When I walked in and I said “Hey, so I want to learn all the skills of what you folks are doing here. I'm getting an English lit degree at the university. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but boy, I want to do walking tours,” and they said “That's great, slow down. We would love to have you volunteer. And you're going to probably start at the desk and start greeting visitors that way. And then we'll talk about walking tours, but we're not going to get there yet.” And so that was my first foray into, sort of, visitor services and interpretation. And then within six months of that, Dave, the first Superintendent of the national park, he showed up and he had a meeting with this existing corps of volunteers. There about, we were at least 100 strong at that point.
Dave: Wow.
Jen: Yep. And he got in front of us and he said...
Dave: That's hometown, that's hometown pride. 100 people volunteered for this park that was still in progress, still in its infancy. That's out of this world. All right. Continue.
Jen: Absolutely, right? So that is hometown pride. So he said, “Listen, we want to formally fold you folks in, and to welcome you folks into the National Park Service VIP program,” and we said, “Well...”
Dave: For the listeners, Jen, VIP stands for...
Jen: Yes, Volunteer In Parks program.
Dave: Yes, yes they are VIP's in the “very important person” sense but in this instance, VIP is Volunteers In Parks. Continue. Thank you.
Jen: Absolutely. And Dave, I think another important thing to say here is and I tell people this all the time- one of the best ways to get into the National Park Service is through volunteering. Well, for me, that position lasted probably about five months. And on a shift, I had a Monday morning shift, I had doing my volunteer work with this new park in this visitor center, this gorgeous old bank building, I walked in, and on the desk was a job announcement for a seasonal park ranger. I was able to be picked up at that point as this park’s first seasonal park ranger. And guess what they asked me to do immediately.
Dave: I can't imagine.
Jen: They asked me to manage and coordinate that 100-strong volunteer force that I just come from, and I thought, “This is going to be fun,” and it was a lot of fun. And that's how I sort of worked into the Park Service. I sort of joke, but it's it’s, it's the truth. Right time, right place. Right place, right time. I think that's the motto of my career.
Dave: Let's break down, though, the Statue of Liberty; it is so iconic. Not everybody knows it's a national park and you had the opportunity to be the chief of interpretation there. What was that like? Because that site gets so many visitors from all over the world.
Jen: Oh boy, it was, it was of all things, it was humbling, it was exciting, it was scary.
Dave: Yeah
Jen: Because it's a lot of responsibility, right? I think the reason why that that assignment for me felt so successful was, it was a place where I could really showcase my strengths. But boy, the volume! Imagine coming from a small place like New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park and then landing at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was mind-blowing to me. Let's be honest, you know, I don't care what your career is, there are going to be hills and valleys and sometimes lulls and times when you're celebrating and thinking you're the highest you're ever going to be in that in that position and feeling great about it. But sometimes you get down into a place where you're like, “I don't know what my place is. I don't know where I should be. I don't know what my next step is. I'm not sure if I'm still contributing.” I was named the Superintendent of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in March of 2019.
Dave: There it is, there it is! It's “local girl makes good.” That's out of this world, and again so atypical for those of us who have, who journeyed so far and had wonderful experiences, but it's clear as we talk, to me, you know how important your hometown, how important New Bedford is to you, and you've clearly made a home there and you've clearly had an impact on that community. So quickly, you know, we're sort of at the end of our conversation here. But what's next? We've talked a lot about what's come before. You’re superintendent now, you've been in the seat for a few years. What's next for New Bedford Whaling? What do we have to look forward to? And why should everybody book their trip to New Bedford tomorrow? Yeah.
Jen: What's next for this park? This park is doing wonderful, wonderful thing. We are, we're sort of blowing up the story of wailing a little bit. It's really interesting. So, way back in the beginning, we were super core, right? Like core stories and core partners and sort of the most pure interpretation of the story. Now we're thinking much more broadly about how to tell this, this world, this international story of arts, economics, science, weather, hydrology, I mean all of this, it's steam, right? It's all the things in this story. And so, we're working with new partners We have a new artist-in-residence program, it's fairly new, it's about maybe five years old, but that's an area that we're certainly putting resources into because it's starting to attract national artists who want to be in New Bedford, who want to immerse themselves in our history and culture and then interpret it through the medium that they work with. And it has been just incredible. We are also very connected here to our partners who are telling the stories of our LGBTQ folks, both in history and contemporary. Because, again, they were here, you know? We just had an artist-in-residence program; it was a married couple, Beatrice and Elaine, and they did some incredible research, and they found the queer stories of New Bedford related to the whaling industry. I had not heard some of these. There were letters, there were beautiful samples that were cross-stitched.
Dave: Wow.
Jen: It was really amazing. And so, and they were talking about whaling in the 19th century, here in New Bedford and the economics of it, and the social history of it. And I'd also say that lastly, another area of our story that we're really getting a little radical about and we really need to, is the Underground Railroad story in New Bedford. New Bedford was a critical stop on the Underground Railroad as people went north. But more importantly, it wasn't a passthrough only. It was a place where people stayed. And they stayed here because New Bedford was a free community where there were free Blacks here. It was a free Black community that was welcoming and harboring escaped slaves. It wasn't just the rich white community here. There was a whole community of free Black folks here that we're protecting these escaped slaves and sending them off onto whaling ships and out into various industries where they were actually allowed to work.
Dave: You know we're all here in the National Park Service, and we are expanding the idea of the stories that we tell every day and trying to go back and correct some of the omissions in history and celebrate stories that haven't been told before, and I hope that this podcast is one small part of that as we illuminate stories from people like you- employees, but also volunteers and visitors and other people who interact with o
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