Russell Smith is New Superintendent of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania
National Military Park
By Deborah Fitts

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - Russell "Russ" Smith, a 30-year veteran withthe National Park Service (NPS), took over as superintendent of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park in late August.Smith, 54, said he made "a step sideways" to the superintendent's joafter serving 14 years in Philadelphia at the headquarters of NPS's Northeast Region. He has been chief of interpretation and visitor services for the 13-state region, advising park managers on interpretive programs, concessions and public safety at more than 70 sites from Maine to West Virginia.

Smith replaces Sandy Rives, who last year took the post of Virginiastate director for NPS. Assistant Superintendent John Hennessy has served as acting superintendent for more than a year.

Hennessy said Smith was "very smart, very sensible, and extremely personable. People will enjoy working with him." Because of his regional oversight of interpretation, Smith "knows this park very well," Hennessy said. "He will do extremely well here."

Hennessy, who did not apply for the superintendent's job, will assume the post of chief historian formerly held by Robert Krick, who retired last year. The position of assistant superintendent has been obliterated for "budgetary reasons," he said.

Smith, a Delaware native with a degree in American history from the University of Delaware, said he was pleased to return to the "hands-on" experience of managing a national park.

"I stopped by the regional office for a cup of coffee in 1989. I didn't expect to stay that long," said Smith, in a telephone interview a month before his arrival in Fredericksburg. "I always
wanted to get back in a park - especially a Civil War site."

Smith said most of his reading is history, and most of that is the Civil War. A visit to Harpers Ferry as a college student inspired him to join the Park Service. Last year he won the prestigious Department of the Interior Superior Service Award for his work in interpretation, including improved staff training and the development of publications, exhibits and film.

A plan designed by Smith to implement and update interpretation was adopted nationwide in 1995. Smith was closely involved in a recent NPS initiative to add the "causes and consequences" of the war to the interpretation at Civil War parks.

The change, plus a new emphasis on slavery imposed by Congress, has prompted criticism that the parks are abandoning their focus on battles and leaders in favor of a new, politically correct agenda.

But Smith said it was simply a matter of "telling stories in context."

"Visitors don't seem to come equipped with the context to understand the story the way they used to," he explained, and the parks are seeking to remedy that. "We have to start at a more basic level."

Smith considers himself "a practical historian," seasoned in writing exhibit texts. He hailed the trend of recent years to enlist the help of scholars in planning new exhibits and interpretation.

As for slavery, "I don't think that any serious scholar could deny that it was a major cause of the Civil War. But just because it was a cause, it doesn't mean that's why soldiers fought. Their individual motivations were really quite varied. Throughout history you have to judge every event in the context of its own times."

Smith said the slavery issue was not forced down the parks' throats.

"It was a cause of debate that needed to take place and will continue," he said. "It wasn't either bad or good. It did push us to think about the stories we're telling. "In reality, the parks are left to deal with slavery as they see fit. There's no set script. We're not being leaned on."

Smith said his biggest challenge facing the park is the area's rapid development. He will seek to make the park "active participants" with Spotsylvania County officials in land-planning issues.

Rives and Hennessy have been "excellent" in this regard; "I'll be listening to John and Sandy very carefully."

Smith would also like to upgrade exhibits, many of which date from the 1960s. He will "make sure we have an adequate protection staff."

And he will look at ways to enhance the budget, possibly hiking fees for special permits.

Smith has worked at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Independence National Historical Park in Pennsylvania and George Washington Birthplace in Virginia, among other sites, serving at different times as park historian, interpretive operations chief and division chief. He served as acting superintendent at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Pennsylvania.

The Fredericksburg park includes more than 8,000 acres in four units comprising key battlefields of 1862, '63 and '64. Smith will oversee a $3 million budget and an employee force of 42 full-timers and 15 to 20 seasonals.

He hopes that visitors to the park's four units "would come away with a sense of the sacrifice and the tragedy of war, a feeling that these were real people who did things that were very hard to do and took incredible risks. Knowing that they might be killed at any moment, they still charged up Marye's Heights or stood their ground."

Smith and his wife Jackie have two children and one grandchild.