Monika Mayr Is New Vicksburg Superintendent
By Deborah Fitts
September 2004

VICKSBURG, Miss. - After nine months without a permanent chief at its helm, Vicksburg National Military Park will receive a new superintendent at the end of September.

Monika Mayr, a National Park Service manager with more than two decades of experience, will assume the top post at the 105-year-old park. Former superintendent Bill Nichols retired Jan. 2, and was replaced by Acting Superintendent Rosie Wince.

Mayr, a native of Northern Virginia, acknowledged that Vicksburg will be her first historical park. She has been serving for seven years as assistant superintendent of Biscayne National Park in Miami.

"I'm very interested in being part of a community that is, as I call it, 'drenched in history,'" Mayr said. "In my early years I was stepping around the Civil War. But I'm looking forward to actually becoming immersed in it, and helping people understand how it shaped the values of this country."

Before her stint at Biscayne, Mayr served as top manager for three years at the Obed Wild and Scenic River in Wartburg, Tenn.

Patricia Hooks, director of the Park Service's Southeast Region, said Mayr had faced "management challenges during her career, and brings a lot of experience and knowledge to her new assignment. She will fit in well with the community and the staff at Vicksburg."

Mayr said her challenges at the park will include "the landscape - getting a good feel of what it was at the time of the battle and trying to get it back to that if possible." She said she was also "looking forward to working with the community and having residents experience and learn about the battle."

Early in her career Mayr was assigned to writing design and construction documents for sites in the National Capital Region. She noted that it was at the time that Manassas battlefield was threatened with a shopping mall, and she said she found it sobering to witness the development on the battlefield before Congress stepped in and seized the land.

"I looked at the pictures of the historic resources, and what I saw happening," Mayr said. "It caused me to catch my breath."

Mayr is a magna cum laude graduate of Virginia Tech with a bachelor's degree in parks and recreation management. She worked briefly for the Fairfax County Park Authority in Falls Church, Va., before beginning her Park Service career in Washington, D.C.

There she served as a contract specialist for 10 years, becoming involved in renovation projects at the White House, the vice president's residence, and the Kennedy Center. In 1994 she transferred to Tennessee to head Obed, then moved to Miami in 1998 to become assistant superintendent at Biscayne.

At Vicksburg Mayr will head a staff of 40, which is charged with protecting and interpreting the 1,736-acre park and its 116-acre national cemetery with 18, 244 graves.