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| Jim Szyjkowski | |
The bronze soldier atop the 24th Wisconsin Infantry monument at the Chickamauga Battlefield seems to be holding a stick in one hand and air in another: His rifle was stolen years ago.
All the bronze plaques commemorating battles and units at the Sherman Reservation on the far north end of Missionary Ridge are missing in action — taken by vandals for scrap metal or unique conversation pieces.
Atop Orchard Knob, two out of three soldiers who stood guard on the Maryland Monument are completely missing — the victims of vandals who pushed them off their pedestals and left them on the ground in pieces.
These are just a few of the Civil War park’s many defaced and damaged monuments.
With repair price tags from $5,000 to $1 million apiece, the memorials make up about $8.6 million of what Park Superintendent Shawn Benge says is $31 million in deferred maintenance projects at the park.
Since the deferred maintenance backlog is more than 12 times the park’s $2.5 million-a-year budget, the monument fixes could be a long time coming, according to officials.
A State of the Parks assessment published last month by the National Parks Conservation Association starkly categorizes the needs of the 18-unit park that straddles the Tennessee and Georgia state line.
“Current funding for the park is not sufficient for the protection and management of its resources,” according to “State of the Parks: Tennessee’s Civil War National Parks.”
“The Chattanooga and Chickamauga Military Park needs additional staff — especially for resource management,” the assessment states. The park’s maintenance of cultural and natural resources is only “fair,” the report states.
But with only eight full-time maintenance workers and nearly 10,000 acres, 600 monuments and thousands of plaques and markers in the park, officials say they depend heavily on volunteers and occasional donations.
“We do our best,” said Don Stephenson, the park’s facility manager.
The park got stimulus help this year from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The federal stimulus is giving $380,000 to efforts this year to repaint cast-iron plaques and fix trails and landscapes in the park. The extra money allowed the park to hire 25 temporary seasonal workers.
“It’s certainly $380,000 we wouldn’t have had,” Park Superintendent Shawn Benge said last month when the stimulus award was announced.
Generally, park officials are able to put $662,000 of the operating budget each year toward maintenance, though Mr. Benge has calculated that it would cost about $1.5 million annually to meet all the needs.
“This leaves a (yearly) gap of approximately $1.4 million,” he said.
The park usually receives between $300,000 to $700,000 in additional federal money each year to catch up its deferred maintenance, Mr. Benge said.
But the extra help still is a long way from $31 million.
HISTORICALLY CORRECT
The monument and marker fixes are especially costly because they must be historically correct, said Jim Szyjkowski, the park’s chief of resource management.
“We have to have patterns made to recast them,” he said. “Even the cannonballs must be made of the original material (lead). They can’t just be plastic or concrete.”
And the markers and monuments are historic, said Kay Parish, executive director of the Friends of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. After 1890, when the park was established and became the nation’s first military park, Civil War veterans from all over the nation returned to find their battlefield locations and commemorate them.
“A lot of people don’t realize these monuments were actually sited and placed here by the veterans themselves 100 years ago,” she said.
Today, the park is one of the most popular in the national park system, according to the National Parks Conservation Association assessment.
“Nearly a million people visit Chickamauga and Chattanooga every year,” the report states.
Mr. Benge said he hopes the park will get another $300,000 in stimulus money in coming weeks. That money may be put toward some monument repairs at Orchard Knob, officials said.
The park also benefits from friends, both individuals and the official Friends of the Park, Mr. Szyjkowski said.
A box in the visitors center holds dollars donated for monument repair, and the Friends group headed by Ms. Parish has staged several fundraisers and organized volunteer programs.
Established in 1986, the Friends group raised $250,000 in the late 1990s to help rebuild the Wilder Brigade Monument and upgrade the park’s multimedia show. The restored monument, with an interior staircase, reopened to the public in 1999.
Historical groups also help from time to time, Mr. Szyjkowski said.
A few years ago, a Minnesota historical group raised the money to repair Minnesota monuments in the park.
“We’ll always have needs,” he said.
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Imagine this. Full time employees who spend 4 hours a day discussing issues with each other and their supervisor, 2 hours having lunch and the final 1 hours of the day filling out paper work about what they spend the last 8 hours doing!Imagine every year tripling your workforce with untrained temporary summer laborers.
These laborers go work in groups with no supervision.They use brush cutters with metal blades to trim around monuments,gauging deep cuts into the granite or knocking pieces off of the edges.
Maybe they are totally incompetent and while sending txt messages on their cell phones forget what they are doing and drive headlong into a monument or cannon.This is not just the raw seasonal workers guilty here !
Now back to supervision,the problems with supervision at the Chickamauga Battlefield are profound. You have people who serve in high grade supervisory positions who do not know the location of landmarks in the park itself. Supervision with this organization consists of sitting in an office and assigning blame. Blame usually falls on the people who are trying against all odds to do their job because they arent visible to the boss,the guys running around doing nothing but running their mouths and gossiping look busy. The guy thats in the woods cutting timber off of a trail or washing a monument is just out in the woods hiding or goofing off. And if your not assigning blame you may be in a meeting with your employee's,a 2-4 hour meeting wherein you discuss why trucks used for working in the woods and hauling heavy equipment are scratched or dented, and then another hour assigning blame for the damage. And what other job have you heard of where your bosses boss comes in, and in front of the whole crew dresses him down? Hard for your boss to maintain discipline in that situation isnt it ? Anytime you do something wrong just say "(insert boss's name) didnt tell me to do it, or "told me to do it that way"
And hey,speaking of equipment. How productive is it to go through 1 or 2 name brand chain saws or weedeaters a summer because your employees are incapable of mixing the proper 1:50 ratio of fuel and oil ? And then you've got the guys who, when its close to quitting time grab one of the park ATVs and race around on them through the back trails and woodlots . "How'd the gator get that dent", "I dunno"
The lowest paid maintenance man at Chickamauga by the way gets nearly 16 bucks an hour, and you pay for this goat rodeo every year on april 15
The problem isnt lack of money, its lack of ability, lack of supervision of professionalism and a lack of standards. You can throw more money at the problem but its just going to result in more expensive problems. It would be like giving monkeys extra manure. We all know what they are going to do with it.
I dont want to damn all the employees, there is alot of really good dedicated guys who work hard and honest and do a good job. But theres alot who aint.