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Coming West: Work In The National Park Service

StoryCorps park rangers
STORYCORPS
/
UTAH PUBLIC RADIO

Greer Chesher and Barb Graves talk about their time as Park Rangers in Zion National Park.

Barb and Greer first met as park rangers in 1981. Barb Graves came from being a fire fighter from the forest service. She was one of the first female fire fighters to be hired and trained.

"It was one of the first times they were actually training women to be firefighters. I was thrilled to be a part of that, which is now kind of taken for granted but we really were on the cusp of the leading edge of women expanding careers in those kind of areas," Barb said.

Greer said she doesn't remember a time when she didn't want to be a park ranger.

"It was sort of the mystique of the parks and my first job was at Bandelier National Monument and then I remember the guy who hired me saying, 'Why do you want to come from Michigan to New Mexico?' And I said, I'm getting a little tired of the Eastern deciduous forest.

Wallace Stegner once said living in the east is like living in a salad- and Greer said she agrees.

"I can't remember what it's like anymore."

Shalayne Smith Needham has worked at Utah Public Radio since 2000 as producer of Access Utah. She graduated from Utah State University in 1997 with a BA in Sociology, emphasis on Criminology. A Logan native, she grew up with an appreciation for the great outdoors and spends her free time photographing the Western landscape and its wildlife.