May 2011
Following the Path
Kayci Cook Collins is the fourth generation in her immediate family to serve as a National Park Service (NPS) employee. Members of her family have worked for the NPS for nearly a century. Both of her grandfathers, John O. Cook and Meredith Guillet, were park superintendents, as was her father, John Edward Cook. Kayci is the current superintendent at El Malpais and El Morro National Monuments in west central New Mexico. She has served in this position since 2004.
The Cook family connection with the NPS began with Kayci’s paternal great grandfather, John Edwin Cook, a Forest Service employee, who later served at Grand Canyon National Park in the mid-1920s. Both John Edwin and his son, John O., grew up at the Grand Canyon and attended the same one-room schoolhouse.
Kayci’s father, John Edward, also decided on a career in the NPS. He majored in business at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he fell in love with Marjorie Guillet, whom he had met as a child in the national parks. Her father, Meredith Guillet, had served at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Mesa Verde National Park. “When Mom and Dad got married,” Kayci explains, “their fathers were both superintendents at monuments just outside of Flagstaff, one at Walnut Canyon and the other at Wupatki.”
Kayci spent her early childhood exploring Canyon de Chelly National Monument and Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, where her father was superintendent. “Having the run of the ancient pueblos and historic buildings was idyllic,” she says. Her father’s career advancement kept the family moving every couple of years, but Kayci says, “I loved it.”
Kayci’s father eventually became the southwest regional director in Santa Fe. “Our family has always felt that the Southwest is home,” Kayci says. She graduated from Santa Fe High School in 1979 and followed in her parents footsteps at Northern Arizona University.
“That same year, Dad was tapped to become regional director in Alaska,” she says. “He was a bold leader, driven and outspoken. He and Mom, and my brother moved to Anchorage.”
For four years her father oversaw all the national parks in the 49th state, many of them newly designated or enlarged. Kayci spent one summer touring the parks with her dad, often in a small airplane. “Exploring Alaska’s national parks was like having my college textbooks morph into 3D,” Kayci says. “From the plane’s windows I saw glaciers pushing their way to the sea, Mt. McKinley scraping the clouds, and the wildlife! I couldn’t believe I was seeing whales and brown bears in their natural habitat.”
Kayci wanted to work for the National Park Service, too. She took summer jobs as a seasonal ranger in Canyon de Chelly and Wupatki National Monuments. Her first permanent job was at the San Antonio Mission National Historic Park in San Antonio, Texas. By this time her father had left Alaska to serve as superintendent at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and then transferred back to Santa Fe as the southwest regional director. “I couldn’t work in parks that Dad oversaw, so I went to Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin.”
It was along the shoreline of southwestern Lake Superior that she developed a love of sea kayaking. “Bayfield, where I lived, was a beautiful town of eight hundred people, perched on the lake, very lovely,” she says. “The islands are very much wild except for lighthouses and historical fish camps.”
By the time she was thirty, Kayci felt she was ready to be a park superintendent. She had seen her father select many women for leadership roles in the NPS. “I followed the path of women who went before me,” she says. Kayci’s mother did not pursue a career with the NPS mainly because in her day most women were clerks and secretaries, with a few exceptions. “But Mom was always Dad’s closest advisor,” Kayci says. “They worked as a team. She would have made a good superintendent.”
Kayci’s father suggested that Kayci go to Washington, D.C., to learn about park management, legislation and the legal underpinnings of the National Park Service. “I worked there for two years, one year on Capitol Hill for the Senate,” Kayci says. “It was absolutely the best two years of training I could have had for becoming a superintendent—an extremely powerful experience.”
In 1996, Kayci became park superintendent for two parks in Baltimore, Maryland: Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, home of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and Hampton National Historic Site, an 18th century plantation. “I had a blast. That was a really fun job,” she says. “President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were periodic visitors to Fort McHenry, because the park was a secure, convenient location for landing Marine One, the presidential helicopter. On those days, instead of tourists and schoolchildren, our visitors were Secret Service agents, fire companies, and bomb-sniffing dogs.”
After Kayci’s father retired in 1999, Kayci became the deputy superintendent at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona and Utah, and married Randy Collins, a Washington, D.C., attorney, who telecommuted between Arizona and Washington. Their son Sean was born in Page, Arizona in 2001.
Kayci moved back to New Mexico in 2004 and has been superintendent at El Malpais and El Morro National Monuments ever since. “I am really lucky to work at these places,” she says. “The park resources are spectacular and my co-workers are great believers in the mission of the NPS. We all feel connected—that our work is important. The National Parks are an incredible system of national treasures, a gift that each generation gives to the next.”
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