ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602190074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
AN IDENTITY CRISIS within the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway could weaken this link to the scenic road's preservation.
A handful of dedicated, ardent lovers of the Blue Ridge Parkway undertook a lofty goal six years ago: to help preserve the specially designed road that meanders along mountain ridges and rural valleys of Western Virginia and North Carolina.
The 469-mile scenic national highway was beginning to show its age. Millions of visitors who come every year to marvel at the Appalachian beauty were taking a toll on the 50-year-old parkway. And encroaching development from surrounding communities threatened the parkway's scenic vistas.
The Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1989 to help clean up litter, clear trails, sponsor school groups and raise money for a host of other projects.
Now, the group is struggling to preserve itself.
Membership is mediocre, and money is scarce. The group is without a director, having lost the last one after only eight months. Ongoing personality clashes have hobbled the group's initiatives, and recently a former board member's charges of mismanagement brought on a run of bad publicity.
Underlying these setbacks, the board of directors is caught up in a philosophical dispute. Some board members think Friends should continue working strictly on projects OK'd by parkway management, specifically Superintendent Gary Everhardt. But others think the group should become more autonomous, advocating positions that may run counter to park policy.
The internal struggle could split Friends into two groups, or destroy it. Or it could, some say, help forge a more vital, active group than ever.
"There are too many people who feel the way I do to let this thing sink," said Chase Ambler, a newcomer to the Friends board and a retired schoolteacher in Asheville, N.C., where the parkway and the Friends are headquartered.
Ambler believes Friends should continue to get the National Park Service's approval on brochures, grant applications and other printed material. "It's only ethical, it's only common courtesy to pass it by them," he said.
Another board member, Robert Miller, a retired commercial pilot living in Roanoke, said Friends doesn't need more say in how the parkway is run because that's Everhardt's responsibility. "I think all we should do is assist him in any way we can," Miller said.
Roy Lochner disagrees.
"These park superintendents have a little empire," said Lochner, a Roanoke County real estate agent and treasurer of Friends. "Nothing happens on the parkway without approval from on high in Asheville. Not the smallest thing."
Lochner would like to see the group become less beholden to Everhardt, who plans to retire next year after two decades in the parkway's top job.
"I don't see Friends being a watchdog group," said Richard Wells of Roanoke, a board member and publisher of Blue Ridge Country magazine. But neither should the group blindly agree with everything the parkway management says and does.
"Gary Everhardt wants an organization that should more aptly be named Friends of Gary Everhardt," Wells said. "Members don't want that. They don't know Gary Everhardt. They are interested in the 469-mile linear highway."
A vast majority of the 2,000-plus members thinks the nonprofit organization and the park service should be mutually supportive, but maintain financial and administrative independence, according to a membership survey published last spring in Friends' newsletter.
Everhardt referred questions about Friends to Gary Johnson, the parkway's chief of resource planning who acts as the group's liaison.
Johnson said Everhardt envisioned Friends as a fund-raising, service-oriented volunteer group. As more people with different ideas got involved, "Gary got more uncomfortable ... much more controlling to restore the direction he'd seen this group going," Johnson said. |n n| For as long as there's been a National Park Service, there have been citizen volunteers who help protect America's "crown jewels."
But it's only been in the last decade that so-called Friends groups have really taken off, said Destry Jarvis, the park service's assistant director of external affairs in Washington, D.C. And it's only been the last few years that the agency has come to fully embrace and encourage the idea of private groups pitching in.
"The stark reality is that we're in a period of reduced federal employment and appropriation, but we still have the same workload," Jarvis said.
Even more important, however, is the bond that communities develop for parks when local people "pour their sweat and energy" into caring for them. Preservation of the nation's parks will increasingly rely on such private/public partnerships, Jarvis said.
Of the 369 national parks in the United States, roughly 300 have a group similar to the Friends organization. Residents of the Shenandoah Valley are in the early stages of forming a Friends of the Shenandoah National Park.
Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee is often cited as an example of a successful group. Established in late 1993, the group has 2,000 members and has raised $354,000 specifically for park projects, said director Charles Maynard.
"Our mission statement is to assist the National Park Service in caring for the Smokies," Maynard said. The park sets the priorities for projects, and the Friends stick to the list.
While some Friends groups play the role of watchdog, sometimes challenging policies within a particular park, the Smokies group does not. For one, that would threaten its tax status, Maynard said. But in addition, the group has a close working relationship with park staff. "When the board has ideas, the superintendent listens and thoughtfully considers them," he said. |n n| That's not been the case at the Blue Ridge Parkway, some Friends members said. The current power struggle dates back more than a year, and is compounded by a clash between Vera Guise, a paid consultant who acted as the Friends' unofficial director for three years, and some of the parkway's "old guard" managers, including Everhardt.
Guise was tapped in 1992 for her work in numerous nonprofit organizations in Asheville. She also is married to a parkway employee. "I do think they thought they would control me because of that," she said.
But that didn't happen. When she came on board, Friends had only 153 members and kept receipts in a cardboard box. She said the group did the bidding of parkway officials, who usually attended the board meetings.
"I took a secret club and turned it into a functioning organization," Guise said. Using her own computer and office space, Guise increased membership to more than 2,000 over the next couple of years.
But she had to fight parkway managers at almost every step, she said, from not being allowed to use the agency's copy machine to clashing over how to organize a litter pickup campaign.
She announced her resignation in December 1994 - shortly after Jim Ryan, a recently retired veteran Blue Ridge Parkway manager, was elected to the Friends board.
Ryan contends that Guise was attempting to control the board and the organization, just as Everhardt was. "Basically, you have two massive egos colliding," Ryan said.
Still others say Ryan opposed Guise because he wanted the executive director's job himself. Not so, Ryan maintains. He never even applied for the job, which went last spring to Richard Burrow, the former Explore Park engineer from Roanoke.
Burrow resigned after eight months to head up the National D-Day Memorial Foundation in Bedford, a professional opportunity he said he couldn't pass up, despite the awkward timing. Reluctant to discuss details of his time with Friends, he commended the board for "taking on the task of taking a hard look at itself. It's not easy."
Last October, Ryan was voted off the board for allegedly badmouthing the group to a potential $50,000 donor. Ryan denies the charge, and has gone public with his criticisms in letters to the Asheville Citizen-Times.
"I tell you, it's a soap opera. It's the most unbelievable thing I've ever been involved in," Ryan said.
He charges that the group has spent too much money on administrative costs and not enough on parkway projects. "I do not think this group should solicit from an unsuspecting public when none of the money is going to the parkway," Ryan said.
Several board members quickly responded with their own published letters, listing Friends' accomplishments: a traveling exhibit; another exhibit at a visitor center; posters for the Friends' mascot, "Groundhog Grover"; several publications; a toll-free information number; and numerous educational programs.
They also tout Friends' lead role in forging ties among parkway leaders, landowners and local governments to address development along the parkway, an issue that came to a head with Roanoke County developer Len Boone's 1992 proposal to build a subdivision in one of the county's last remaining open views along the parkway.
Still, even the group's president, Neal Andreae, a retired Air Force major living in Hendersonville, N.C., said Friends has suffered from "growing pains."
Annual income from grants, memberships and other sources has averaged about $72,000 since 1993, while expenses have averaged about $10,000 more, according to the group's annual reports.
For the 1995-96 year, Friends had proposed a budget of $170,000, with $42,000 earmarked for projects and the rest going for salaries, travel, brochures and other promotional items. But grants totaling $70,000 fell through, and now the group can't afford to hire another executive director, Ambler said.
For the time being, the group is focusing on negotiations with the parkway on a new "memorandum of agreement" - the contract that permits the federal agency to accept money or donations. The first memorandum expired two years ago, about the same time the Friends' identity crisis set in.
The new agreement will also clarify the relationship between the Friends and the parkway, said Johnson, the parkway's planning chief.
There are no major disagreements so far, except for one matter. "It's the 'A' word," Johnson said. "You'll hear some [board members] say 'advocacy.'"
But there are already plenty of critics out there who challenge park policies, Johnson said. "What we wanted is something different. They were going to be our friends, no matter what."
If the board insists on going that route, Johnson said, the park would likely ask them not to use the name of the Blue Ridge Parkway. "We're not going to change our position."
But Johnson is optimistic an agreement will be reached, because, in the end, the park and the Friends both want the same thing - to preserve and protect the Blue Ridge Parkway.
LENGTH: Long : 182 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart by staff: Blue Ridge Parkway Board. Map. byby CNBstaff.