December 6, 2003 - Port Clinton News Herald: Nicaragua RPCV Andrew J. Ferguson will oversee Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial
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December 6, 2003 - Port Clinton News Herald: Nicaragua RPCV Andrew J. Ferguson will oversee Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial
Nicaragua RPCV Andrew J. Ferguson will oversee Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial
Nicaragua RPCV Andrew J. Ferguson will oversee Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial
New superintendent named to oversee Perry's monument
By RICK NEALE
Staff writer
PUT-IN-BAY -- A management analyst from a national park in Georgia has been picked to take over operations at Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial.
Andrew J. Ferguson will report to South Bass Island in March as the park's new superintendent. He works at Cumberland Island National Seashore, located at Georgia's extreme southeastern corner near Jacksonville, Fla.
"Andy's expertise in community relations and his broad background in park operations will serve him well in his new assignment," National Park Service Midwest Regional Director Ernie Quintana stated in a news release.
Ferguson replaces Ralph Moore, who took over the Put-in-Bay park in June 2000. Moore was reassigned in May as superintendent of Scott's Bluff and Agate Fossil Beds national monuments in western Nebraska.
Chief Ranger Gerard Altoff is serving as acting superintendent until Ferguson's arrival.
Ferguson earned college degrees at the University of California and University of Idaho before joining the Peace Corps as a national park planner in Nicaragua. He then served federal stints across the western United States as outdoor recreation planner at Henry Mountain Resource Area in Utah; district ranger at Capitol Reef National Monument in Utah; subdistrict ranger at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona; and district ranger at Big Bend National Park in Texas.
He then served as concessions management specialist at Havasu Resource Area in Arizona before taking that same role at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada.
He became management analyst at Cumberland Island National Seashore in 1998.
The superintendent's job at Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial is considered a stepping stone to larger NPS facilities.
The park saw a number of significant capital upgrades under Moore's watch, most notably the $2.5 million visitors center on Toledo Avenue that opened in May 2002.
A $450,000 construction project inside the monument during winter 2001-02 represented the park's first full-scale effort to combat structural cracking.
On September 10, 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated and captured a British squadron of warships at the Battle of Lake Erie. The battle, fought during the War of 1812, secured control of Lake Erie for the United States and enabled General William Henry Harrison to conduct a successful invasion of Western Upper Canada. Harrison subsequently defeated the British and Indians at the Thames River on October 5, 1813. The dual victories of Lake Erie and the Thames provided an important morale boost to the young country and gave the United States a much stronger bargaining position at the peace talks. The Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814, ended the War 1812. However, in 1817 the United States signed the Rush-Bagot Agreement with Great Britain, a document that has resulted in peaceful relations between the United States and Canada since the War of 1812. Constructed between 1912 and 1915 by a commission of nine states and the federal government, Perry's Victory & International Peace Memorial was built not only to commemorate the American naval triumph, but also "to inculcate the lessons of international peace by arbitration and disarmament." On June 2, 1936 the memorial was established as a unit of the National Park Service by a presidential proclamation of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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Story Source: Port Clinton News Herald
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Nicaragua; Park Planning
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