http://www.wilcosun.com
Many retirees are part of a new trend in this country called
“unretirement.” Instead of whiling away
their newfound freedom on the golf course or devoting time to other hobbies,
these seniors are taking jobs in fields in which they have expertise or with
organizations for which they have a passionate interest. That passion for local Georgetown residents,
Scott and Judy Finnell, involves our national parks. And a fortuitous conversation among friends
led to a summer adventure at the Grand Canyon.
Scott’s and Judy’s love affair with American national parks originated
while on an Alaskan cruise where they were introduced to the Passport to Your National Parks program. This program is a tool to ignite the
public’s interest by allowing visitors to the national parks to obtain cancellation
stamps within a passport book similar to a traveler’s passport. It worked on the Finnell’s. “We want a stamp from every park!” proclaims
Scott. They now make a point of visiting
any national park or monument that is close by on their many travels. But spending only 4 or 5 hours exploring isn’t
enough time for the couple to really get to know a park.
During a conversation at church one Sunday, a friend of the
Finnell’s announced he was leaving to spend the summer working at the North Rim
of the Grand Canyon. The thought of
staying at a national park for an extended period of time and escaping the
broiling Texas summer heat was appealing to them. They jumped on the bandwagon and applied online
for jobs at the Grand Canyon Lodge – North Rim through www.coolworks.com, a
clearinghouse to “find jobs in great places”.
The entire process, including a couple of phone interviews, took
approximately one week to become hired by Forever Resorts, the company that holds
the contract with the North Rim resort. Judy
hired on with the gift shop as a cashier and Scott as the employee shuttle van
driver. However, the couple admonishes, “It’s
critical that people recognize that for us, this was an adventure. For the resort, it’s business and it’s a
job. And they are hiring people to do a
job so be sure you get the job you want.
Because if you get a job that you don’t want, it’s not too much fun.”
And don’t expect to get rich.
They were each paid $8.05 an hour.
From each of their paychecks the resort withheld $12.00 a day which
covered their lodging in a dormitory and 3 meals a day in the staff cafeteria.
Upwards of 240 seasonal employees arrive by planes, trains
and automobiles. But the trek isn’t easy
– the North Rim is at an elevation of 8500 feet, roughly 75 miles from the nearest
town of Fredonia, Arizona and 3 hours from the nearest airport at St. George,
Utah.
The employees’ home-away-from-home consists of a compound of
4 dormitories. Each dorm room is
equipped with its own bathroom and walk-in closet. The rooms have neither air conditioners nor
TV’s. The only TV’s at the resort are
located in the dining hall and the employee pub. The resort also provides WiFi albeit slow
and inadequate for the number of people living there. It was difficult at best to get online to any
social media site or to catch up on news.
Ironically, the remoteness of the resort was appealing to the Finnell’s
but the lack of easily accessible electronics and internet left them also feeling
isolated. This isolation was a culture shock for some of
the younger employees.
Being cut off from the world wasn’t as noticeable on the days
they were working. When they had time
off, they sometimes felt they were stuck in their own “Groundhog Day” doing the
same mundane things over and over such as laundry or visiting the same towns
off the mountain. The happiest people on
their days off were the hikers who wanted to hike every trail. “I’m a runner,” explains Scott, “not a hiker. I wasn’t living for my days off to go do
that.” During these off hours, Judy
often enjoyed sitting on the veranda and gazing at the canyon. “It was different every day. I never took it for granted and always
appreciated the magnitude.”
The Finnell’s were expecting the other employees to be
similar demographically to themselves but quickly realized they were moving
into a “microcosm of the world” that included not only retirees like themselves
but also people leaving the corporate world behind, college kids and foreigners,
as well as men and women living on the edge who were struggling with alcoholism,
drug addiction or indebtedness. Many of
them just needed a second chance.
Scott and Judy were taken aback by the economic imbalance
among the employees. There was a gulf
almost as large as the canyon itself between the “haves” and the “have
nots”. Forever Resorts hires a
considerable amount of employees who move from resort to resort throughout the
year and live paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth. A couple of ladies were living in their cars
at the resort and only using the dorm facilities for showering. These cars will continue to be their homes
once their tenure at the North Rim is over.
Some of the Finnell’s favorite interactions were with the
young, single employees. Scott and Judy
forged relationships with many of these “kids” - Scott acting as social worker
and Judy acting as surrogate parent.
As their days clicked by, it became increasingly apparent
that the resort could make good use of a social worker to assist many of these
employees with getting their lives in order.
“It’s not necessarily the resort’s responsibility, but it is in their
best interest and to the social good to help these people manage their money and
turn into more productive citizens,” proposes Scott. At one point, Scott and
Judy had a serious conversation between themselves about why they were there
and what they were supposed to be doing to help. Judy explains, “Scott decided, really, we’re
kind of doing mission work.”
Despite the disparity among the employees, they made many new
friends. Dinner time often stretched for
a couple of hours or more since the majority of social interaction among the
employees happened at this time. Visiting
with the other employees also filled the electronics void. They chatted about their day, swapped stories
of their lives and families, and created lasting bonds. The Finnell’s even befriended a couple from
Granger and laughed that it took temporarily relocating to the Grand Canyon for
their paths to cross despite only living 18 miles apart from each other in
Texas.
Initially the Finnell’s talked about committing for the
entire 5 ½ month season but after a few weeks at the North Rim, they decided
they would depart after 3 months. “This
has been the perfect adventure for us.
We loved it every minute. If we
had stayed for 5 months, we would not have loved it.”
Would they do it again?
“Yes, but not at this point in our lives . . . as long as we have
responsibility for elderly parents. And
we’d like our grandchildren to be a little older.”
Both Scott and Judy think that our country’s national parks
are the greatest things about being American.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated, “There is nothing so American as
our national parks. . . .The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to
the people, that it is in the process of making for the enrichment of the lives
of all of us. The parks stand as the
outward symbol of this great human principle.”
Scott agrees. “The
richest people in the world do not have any more access than the poorest to the
beauty we have in the parks system. We’re
clearly not in the Rockefeller wealth category, by any means, but I lived at
the Grand Canyon for 3 months! Did he?”
As Scott and Judy reflect on their time at the canyon, the
words of Theodore Roosevelt, when he dedicated the canyon as a national
monument, resonate with them. “[K]eep it
for your children and your children’s children and for all who come after you,
as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all,
should see.”
