On the Park Roads With Harry O’Bryant

1. Yosemite National Park, 1957-67. Stopped on way to Nevada, met a bear, fell in love with the view and stayed 10 years as park ranger.

2. Great Smoky Mountains, N.C., 1967-69. Crafts supervisor at Oconaluftee Job Corps Center (a “beautiful program that cost a heck of a lot less than putting these young men in prison”).

3. U.S. Virgin Islands National Park, St. John, 1970-72. Maintenance supervisor in the land of perpetual summer.

4. Ft. McHenry in Baltimore, 1972-74. Superintendent of the 40-acre park and fort on the rim of the harbor. Ate crab cakes in Locust Point and watched foreign ships go by.

5. Philadelphia, 1976-79. Park evaluator for the mid-Atlantic region, from Shenandoah to the Delaware Water Gap.

6. Padre Island National Seashore, Tex., 1979-83. Facility manager along the Gulf of Mexico. Witnessed the Ixtoc oil spill, when floating pools of oil despoiled 80 miles of the coastline.

7. Jean Lafitte National Historic Park in New Orleans, 1984. Assistant superintendent. Worked to preserve the cultural diversity of an area with 30 distinct ethnic groups, from Cajuns to the Islanos of the Canary Islands.

8. Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park in Johnson City, Tex., since 1984. Superintendent of 500-acre park near the small Hill Country town where the late President was born and died.