When they became park volunteers, the Kirkpatrick family did fun stuff. They dressed as pioneers and re-enacted Georgia settlers' daily lives while school kids watched. They participated in full-moon hayrides and other fund-raisers.
Sure, they picked up the occasional discarded cup at Red Top Mountain State Park and Lodge. They patrolled hiking paths to make sure the walkways were clean. But it was so much more than that.
Volunteering, said Damon Kirkpatrick, was like icing on the cake at the Cartersville park —- something to sweeten the experience of a visit.
"These days," he said, "we are the cake."
The state Department of Natural Resources, which operates Georgia's 63 state parks and historic sites, is relying on free labor like never before. Volunteers who once may have greeted park-goers or participated in wildlife exhibits now find themselves dealing with more pressing issues —- buying and changing toilet paper, for example, or mowing grass.
In a reminder that the national recession affects nearly every facet of life, cutbacks have forced park volunteers to take on tasks once performed by paid staff. The DNR has cut more than 170 jobs, about 12 percent of its parks work force, along with curtailing hours and services at parks and historic sites across Georgia.
"I think we're going to see the volunteers become more and more important in delivering the [park] experiences to guests," said Andy Fleming, executive director of the Friends of Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites. The nonprofit agency is an umbrella organization for 45 chapters that look after Georgia parks and historic sites. Its membership, which includes corporations as well as individuals, numbers about 7,500.
Last year, the chapters donated an estimated 33,000 hours to parks and historic sites, where an estimated 10 million people visited. This year, they may give more free time. Chapters say they are strapped to meet demands placed on them following staff cuts.
"With the cutbacks, the needs are growing," Fleming said. "It's a pretty tall order to replace these cutbacks with volunteers."
Lynn Barfield, a volunteer coordinator for DNR, hears that refrain across the state. She oversees a network of 3,600 volunteers, separate from those in the friends chapters. They range from greeters who stay on-site for weeks to educators who donate a couple hours of expertise when they can. Last year, those volunteers performed more than 150,000 hours of free labor.
Now, said Barfield, some volunteers are likely to be asked to expand their duties, as well as their hours.
"There are a lot of different roles" for volunteers, she said. "Some people will be asked to do some things they haven't been asked to do in the past."
Like make deliveries. When no park employee was available at Stephen C. Foster State Park to retrieve some furniture from Crooked River State Park, volunteers Tom and Penny Thoburn stepped up. The retired couple made the 90-minute drive and brought back office furniture to the park on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp.
"We were happy to do it," Tom Thoburn said.
Cuts 'appalling'
The May news release was remarkably forthright for a government document bearing bad tidings. The DNR announced it would reduce expenditures by 39 percent to meet Gov. Sonny Perdue's mandate that all state agencies curtail costs. For DNR's parks division, the reductions amounted to $11 million. The changes are so profound DNR Commissioner Chris Clark termed them a "reorganization."
Natural Resources was not singled out. The recession forced lawmakers to take money from all state agencies as the months ticked toward July 1, the next fiscal year. Earlier this year, legislators whacked $2.5 billion from the budget to keep the state in the black.
Some of DNR's changes were effective in May and June, while others took effect July 1. Highlights include:
Eliminating 12 percent of the work force. The agency has cut 176 positions, including 81 vacant posts and 37 full-time jobs.
Reduced services and access at five state parks.
Increased fees for accommodations, recreational activities, interpretive programs and parking.
Limited swimming pool operations. DNR closed nine park pools this summer.
Clark termed the cuts "heart-wrenching." The department, he said in the release, would try to "minimize the impact on Georgia citizens and communities."
The impact is hard to ignore, said Big Canoe resident Linda Woodward Geiger. She recently wrote legislators, urging them to give more money to DNR's parks division.
A professional genealogist and long-time park visitor, Geiger believes the state should keep open its historic sites full-time for the benefit of schoolchildren. She's especially incensed about curtailed hours at sites that focus on Georgia's Native American past, such as New Echota in Calhoun, where the Cherokee nation established a capital, and the Etowah Indian Mounds outside Cartersville. She also questions some recreational activities parks still offer.
"I'm sorry that the powers that be ... have decided that fishing and golf are more important than history," said Geiger, 68. "The cuts are appalling."
More volunteers needed
Sweetwater Creek State Park, a quick drive west of Atlanta in Lithia Springs, is a slice of green with a blue heart, the lake where mallards and Canada geese paddle in the shallows, hoping for a potato chip or other handout. Like other parks, it relies on a friends group to defray expenses and add personnel.
"We couldn't get by without them," said Don Scarborough, a ranger at the 2,589-acre site. On a recent afternoon, he strolled the park's visitors' center, where sunlight cascaded on a thousand-year-old bowl discovered at the park four decades ago. It also illuminated other attractions: an ancient petroglyph found a century ago, plus discarded buttons, belt buckles and other reminders that Union Gen. William T. Sherman once passed through.
Without financial and physical help from the Friends of Sweetwater Creek State Park, "this center probably wouldn't be here," said Scarborough.
Lithia Springs resident Pheribie Prescott, who coordinates Sweetwater's volunteers, would like more people to sign up. At present, she said, the friends group has enough volunteers to help at the visitors center, plus do some maintenance on the site, "but we'll probably need more."
The situation is comparable at Amicalola Falls State Park and Lodge, said Jasper resident Jim Burson. He's has been visiting the falls so long that he remembers when people could clamber up its rocky slops, defying death and logic. A walkway keeps people off those rocks now.
Retired, he and his wife, Barbara, are members of Amicalola friends chapter. Both are committed to doing whatever they can to keep the park presentable, he said.
And if a ranger hands him toilet paper and asks him to check the men's room? Burson, 70, didn't hesitate.
"We don't have any problem with that."
Service cutbacks
State park pools closed this year:
A.H.Stephens Bobby Brown F.D. Roosevelt Florence Marina General Coffee Gordonia-Alatamaha Kolomoki Mounds Laura Walker Skidaway Island
State parks with reduced services: Bobby Brown and Hart will close camping sites after Sept. 15 Five cottages and the lakeside beach at Hart have closed Visitors center and group shelter at Providence Canyon are closed Sprewell Bluff no longer has an on-site manager Sweetwater Creek's visitors center is open Thursday-Saturday.
State historic sites with reduced hours:
Dahlonega Gold Museum, open five days a week, Wednesday-Sunday Chief Vann House, Etowah Indian Mounds, Fort Morris, Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation, Jarrell Plantation, New Echota and Pickett's Mill Battlefield, open three days a week ,Thursday-Saturday Robert Toombs House and Traveler's Rest, open only on the first Saturday of each month.
The Lapham-Patterson House State Historic Site in Thomasville is closed.
Source: Department of Natural Resources
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