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Donald
McHenry
Roots of Interpretation: Donald Edward McHenry—Pioneer
Urban Interpreter, Preacher of the Earth
By Dr. Napier Shelton
(originally printed in Legacy, volume 3, number 2)
 Donald
E. McHenry started out as a minister. But shortly thereafter, he
became an interpreter of the earth, at Grand Canyon, Washington,
DC, and Yosemite. His career in the National Park Service, spanning
the years from 1932 to 1958, was marked by a constant push to bring
people to an awareness and love of the natural world.
I remember him mostly from his Washington years when his son Bruce and
I roamed the Potomac River valley near their home on the Chesapeake and
Ohio Canal. I see in memory a round, ruddy, smiling face, a firm, determined
mouth, and mischievous bright eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. As he did
for so many others, he intensified my interest in nature, and that of Bruce,
who went on to a thirty-year career as a Park Service interpreter.
Brought up in rural Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and urged toward the
ministry by his mother, he entered the University of Wyoming because of
a family acquaintance with the Episcopal Bishop of Wyoming. But the young
student soon found the church too political and resolved to pursue botany,
a long standing interest. At the university’s summer science camp
in the Snowy Range, he also studied geology and met his future wife, Bona
May Ford, a schoolteacher from Oklahoma.
His initiation into nature interpretation began in 1927 with a summer job
in Colorado driving a Pierce Arrow tour bus from Estes Park into Rocky
Mountain National Park. Keenly interested in the natural history of the
Rockies, and probably also inspired by the nature guide writings of Enos
Mills, he opened his passengers’ eyes to the life zones through which
they were ascending. In 1929, armed with a Master’s degree in botany
from the University of Colorado, and with his new bride at his side, he
began more formal teaching at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University).
The change from university teaching to interpretation was spurred by a
desire to work in his beloved Rocky Mountain National Park, and in 1931
the Park Service was hiring. Oral exams were being given in St. Louis for
some thirty to forty naturalist positions--the National Park Service’s
first big push toward a solid interpretive (then called naturalist) program.
McHenry mounted his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, rode the mud and dust covered
highways to St. Louis, and soon found himself in a new, exciting job.
It was not, however, at Rocky Mountain National Park, but the Grand Canyon.
This was a time when National Park Service interpreters were going in two
directions. Some concentrated on research, collecting information about
the parks’ little-studied flora, fauna, and geology. Others conveyed
that information to the visiting public. At Grand Canyon, Chief Park Naturalist
Eddie Mckee, a geologist, fell in the first category. Junior Park Naturalist
Donald McHenry, though also intensely interested in cataloging the biota,
archeology, and other resources of the park, applied himself mostly to
visitor programs, in ways far different from those of the university lecture
room.
Megaphone in hand, he rode Fred Harvey’s Pierce Arrow buses along
the South Rim, explaining geology, plant life, and whatever else came into
view. He did the same with auto caravans, a popular interpretive method
of the time. There were also walks into the canyon, and geology talks at
the newly constructed Yavapai Museum, where McHenry mounted binoculars
for closer views of the rock strata. Next to the museum, with Civilian
Conservation Corps help, he developed a garden of native Grand Canyon plants,
arranging them by life zones and somehow keeping the lower-zone plants
alive through South Rim winters. Remnants of this garden still survive.
Perhaps most original, yet shortest lived, were his attempts at interpreting
Grand Canyon geology from the air. Braced in the aisle of a sightseeing
Ford tri-motor airplane, trusty megaphone in hand, he boomed out the story
of the rocks below. The engine noise proved too loud, however, and he soon
abandoned this talk.
In 1936, McHenry was transferred to Washington, DC, to establish a naturalist
program for the National Capital Parks, recently assigned to the jurisdiction
of the Park Service. Arthur Stupka, then a Acadia National Park, and H.
R. Gregg of Hot Springs National Park had conducted experimental naturalist
programs in Washington and reported a fertile field there. Just how fertile
a field, and how energetic the new park naturalist was, were indicated
by McHenry’s 1937 annual report, in which he listed 239 nature walks,
seventeen auto caravans (426 cars), forty-one campfire programs, seventy-three
special lectures, twenty University of Scouting (boys) talks, and sixty
miscellaneous events. A large percentage of these he conducted himself. “At
present,” he reported, “the Park Naturalist is kept busy seven
days a week and often better than ten to twelve hours a day for months
on end. There might be a little more freshness to the work if there were
occasional rest periods.” In later years he had two assistant naturalists
and some seasonals, but his pace never slackened. “I hardly ever
saw him out of uniform,” his son Bruce said.
Much of McHenry’s success in Washington can be attributed to his
wide network of associations with local scientists, city leaders, and NPS
officials, many of whom he persuaded to give walks and talks. Among these
were Harold Bryant, NPS Assistant Director for Education and Research;
Earl Trager, NPS Chief Naturalist; Paul Bartsch of the Smithsonian Institution;
William Mann, Director of the National Zoological Park; Nellie Ross, Director
of the US Mint; and Wyoming Congressman Paul Greever. To keep interest
alive in winter, McHenry invented Winter Indoor Nature Outings, which were
conducted by directors and scientists at the Smithsonian, at the aquarium
of the US Bureau of Fisheries, and elsewhere. One such event at the US
Botanic Gardens attracted some 5,000 people. His own family was recruited,
too. Bona May led walks, and Bruce, when old enough, pitched in at campfire
programs.
McHenry established a campfire program the first year in Washington’s
Rock Creek Park. As Bruce recalls, “People brought their own chairs.
My dad rustled up some wood and built a campfire…He started out by
showing slides of Grand Canyon and other western parks. Upon occasion,
it was so windy we had to tie the screen to a tree. He used lantern slides,
mostly black and white but some hand-tinted. I was recruited to load and
shift slides. You were guaranteed to get a shock from some of those projections
because of dampness in the grass, loose wires, and one thing and another.
It was kind of excited.”
By the summer of 1940, crowds at the campfire programs had grown so large
that the location had to be moved to a sylvan setting farther north in
Rock Creek Park, near the present Carter Barron Amphitheater. In the summer
of 1941, attendance averaged 1,200 people per talk. After the US entered
World War II and gas rationing was instituted, McHenry arranged with the
DC Transit Company to make special bus runs to the highly popular campfire
programs.
“
They brought folding wooden chairs by the hundreds
in trucks from the Interior Department,” Bruce
remembers. “We had the most mammoth screen
you ever saw in your life. It must have been
twenty-five feet square. The workmen had to pull
it up onto a frame with ropes. Music was always
an important part of my dad’s life, and
he thought it would be good to interject good
music into the program. So for an hour before
the regular program, he would play classical
music, which would also be advertised in the
program announcements. The selections were a
collaboration between my father and Nancy Nimitz--Admiral
Nimitz’s daughter--who ran the record lending
department at the main (District of Columbia)
library.”
Thus musically mellowed, the audience then enjoyed a slide program (now
35mm, color) or film on a subject that might be local, national, or even
international. McHenry sought to open the minds of his very diverse audiences
to the whole world. The programs during June 1943, for instance, ranged
from “Rock Creek Park--Woodland Scenery with a Story” to “Yosemite--Wonderland
of the High Sierras” and “Mexico’s People--Yesterday
and Today.”
While many of the campfire programs presented other national parks, natural
scenes, and people throughout the world, the interpretive walks provided
an intimate acquaintance with the natural history of the Washington area.
Though close to or in the city, places like the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
Rock Creek Park, and the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens were richly endowed
with animal and plant life.
Before the war, auto caravans were popular. One went up to Virginia’s
Shenandoah National Park. Another was conducted to the Civil War sites
that ringed Washington. And still another took a look at local geology.
This one, going through the city, presented more than the usual logistical
problems. “One of the earliest trips I’ll never forget,” says
Bruce. “They met near Key Bridge in Georgetown. The place got so
jammed with traffic that they had to get the police to get them unsnarled.
My dad couldn’t talk (normally) to the crowd because there were several
hundred people, much to his surprise. I remember him climbing up a telephone
pole, hanging by one arm and talking about the geology of the fall line
of the Potomac, pointing with the other arm.” Auto caravans were
terminated in 1943 because of gas rationing and were replaced with bus
tours. These ranged as far afield as Gettysburg National Military Park
and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. One memorable trip by boat went overnight
down the Potomac to Williamsburg and Jamestown.
The McHenry’s lived for most of their Washington days in Lockhouse
7 on the C&O Canal, before it became a national historical park. McHenry,
in opposition to some in the NPS who favored a parkway, and the Army Corps
of Engineers, which planned a series of reservoirs along the Potomac, passionately
believed that much of the canal itself should be restored and the land
along it preserved in its natural state. One means to this end was to build
public appreciation of the canal’s historical and natural values.
He conceived the idea of resurrecting mule drawn barge trips, as in pre-1924
days. “He got permission from the Navy to look around the Anacostia
Navy Yard for a barge,” Bruce recalls. “We went down there
with a tape measure to find a barge that would fit inside the canal locks.
He selected one and got the Navy to donate it.”
The barge was towed to the mouth of the canal in Georgetown and rebuilt
in the style of earlier canal barges. The half-day barge trips, with Park-Service
naturalists aboard telling the canal’s human and natural story, and
a mule skinner leading the mules, were immensely popular, and they remain
so today. Later, Justice William O. Douglas was drawn into the effort to
preserve the canal, and the national historical park was born.
Donald McHenry wanted to reach all ages, so he developed many programs
for children. There were walks specifically for children, talks at schools
(I remember him talking about “Jenny Wren” and other birds
at my grade school), and training of children to lead walks (myself included).
He reached many adults not only through his naturalist program, but also
through personal associations and memberships in private groups. His involvement
in the DC Audubon Society (now the Audubon Naturalist Society) led to his
active presidency of his organization.
Besides having energy, enthusiasm for nature and history, and many friends,
McHenry possessed two skills that helped immensely in his work. One was
the ability to get around government obstructions. During the war, only
trucks were allowed a plentiful supply of gas. So he had the maintenance
people convert the trucks of some of the NPS cars into pick-up beds, making
them eligible for more gas.
Another talent was his ability to cultivate media coverage. He made sure
his programs were announced in the newspapers and on the radio, and he
enticed reporters along on some of his outings, including a canoe trip
to publicize the C&O Canal and the first canal barge trip. When he
left Washington, the Washington Times Herald described him as “an
important figure in natural history…studies in the District for the
last ten years,” and the Evening Star said, “Letters of appreciation
are coming into his office today from all over the United States and many
foreign countries for the inspiration (his nature interpretive programs)
afforded.”
Early in 1947, now quite ready for a return to wilder, wider spaces, McHenry
transferred to Yosemite. As Chief Naturalist there, his job was not only
to run the naturalist program, but also to get the defunct Yosemite Field
School going again. The Field School had been started to give natural history
training in the field, mainly to college students. The superintendent,
however, was not enthusiastic about restoring it because of budget concerns
and a belief that is was not contributing much to the Park Service. McHenry
steered the Field School as much as he could toward preparation of future
Park Service interpreters, requiring that students there participate in
Yosemite’s naturalist program. Many graduates did go on to a Park
Service career, and the Field School can now be thought of as the predecessor
of the Mather Training Center in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the principal
training center for NPS interpreters today.
Interpreters like Donald Edward McHenry do not quit when they retire. After
he crossed that threshold in 1958, he often talked to Lions Clubs, garden
clubs, and other groups, carrying with him a slide program on “The
Story Behind the Scenery of the National Parks,” and quoting often
his favorite passage from John Muir: “Climb mountains and get their
good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows
into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms
their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
Like Muir, Donald Edward McHenry was a preacher of the earth.
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