5
Congress Embraces the New Park
The journey of the proposed Women’s Rights National Historical Park through the bureaucracy of the National Park Service had encountered possible blockages, which were overcome with good fortune in timing and a far-seeing director. The team captain for the New Area Study insisted the park be only the Stanton house, if it had to be a park. The chief of legislation objected to and removed the historic district and managing commission and wanted title changes that would have hidden the park. However, Director William Whalen took a leap into the future and submitted the New Area Study to the House and Senate and to the state’s US senators and the district’s representative in Congress. When Senator Moynihan was informed of the park proposal, he immediately and enthusiastically promoted it all the way through the legislative process. The draft legislation was delivered to his office and that of his New York colleague Jacob Javits (R) on January 22, 1980. The Congressional Record for February 5, 1980, includes, beginning on page 1824,
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill to establish a Women’s Rights Historic [sic] Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y. The park, as a formal addition to the National Park System, will commemorate the historic event in Seneca Falls that marked the beginning of the women’s rights movement.
The 1848 Women’s Rights Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others, and held in Seneca Falls’ Wesleyan Chapel, was the setting of the signing of the declaration of sentiments, a document which can certainly be regarded as the Magna Carta of the women’s movement. This unprecedented declaration called for broad societal changes aimed at eliminating discriminatory restriction on women in all their spheres of life. The right to vote, to own property, to become educated, to have equitable divorce and child-care laws—all these and more were proclaimed in this landmark document.
His remarks continued to summarize the proposal. The full text of his bill, identified as S. 2263, was also incorporated into the Congressional Record.
S. 2263 was referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which forwarded it to the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks.
The draft bill was also delivered to Congressman Gary Lee, in whose district the park would be located. However, we had heard that Lee was not enthusiastic about the park idea and was unwilling to introduce a bill in the House. I flew from Boston to Washington to meet with a staff member of the congressman, to jump-start a dialogue. I suggested lunch at a restaurant across the street from Lee’s office, thinking it might be more relaxed. The staffer, a young woman, said that Lee was opposed to the legislation, as our country “could not afford guns and butter at the same time.” I was chewing a roll at the time, and in surprise I inhaled a piece of it in my windpipe, resulting in a loud and protracted coughing spell. I had to leave the dining room to recover and remained speechless for some time after.
Senator Moynihan, however, collaborated with his New York colleague Congressman Jonathan Bingham. Representative Bingham had become committed to the park proposal at the December 1979 hearing on the fifteen New Area Studies that included the Women’s Rights Park. On February 5, 1980, Bingham had a House page drop identical bill language in the “hopper” attached to the side of the bill clerk’s desk in the House chamber. The bill clerk would have picked up the bill and assigned its House number, H.R. 6407, and referred it to the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, which then referred it to the Subcommittee on National Parks and Insular Affairs. Identical bills submitted in the House and the Senate on the same day meant they could each progress on their separate paths at the same time, and perhaps lead to quicker enactment. Hanns Kuttner believed the duplicate submissions created the “optics of inevitability.” Congressman Lee later signed on as a cosponsor, so perhaps my coughing spell in the restaurant was not utterly in vain. Eventually twenty-eight members of the House of Representatives cosponsored the bill, thanks to the work of Nancy Dubner.
Because that year the Park Service and Congress were encouraging the creation of new parks, I was able to travel to Washington several times and promote the park idea to the subcommittee staffs on Capitol Hill. I chose two simple concepts to stress, designed for those who had too many things calling for their attention. Women could not vote until 1920, and they first publicly asked for that right to vote in 1848 at a convention in Seneca Falls that we then asserted began the women’s rights movement. The brisk version: men could vote, and women could not, and it was seventy-two years before women attained the right to vote with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. It was a message easy to understand, and remember, and it resonated with many as a good and compelling idea for a new national park.
Capitol Hill fascinated me: I was struck by the symbols of power and history all around me. Most Park Service hearings were in the Longworth House Office Building hearing room, dominated by a carved wooden dais long enough to seat each member of the National Parks Subcommittee. The walls were filled with enormous, nearly life-size oil portraits of earlier chairmen. All men. Everything bespoke significance, respect, and deference. It all seemed to me to refer back to the early history of America, symbolizing that our laws, and the making of them, reached all the way back to the American Revolution. And further back to England and its common law that became the basis for law in America. The symbols of reverence for the rule of law seemed to me visually expressed on every level in 1978.
The offices for the senators and representatives were spacious and elegant and filled with mementos honoring their accomplishments. The subcommittees and committees had their own offices, with separate offices for Democratic and Republican staffs. The national park subcommittee staff awed me: they had held their positions for years, sometimes for their whole career, loved the parks, and had visited as many parks as they could fit into the congressional recess schedule. I organized four separate subcommittee briefings on Capitol Hill, two for the Senate and two for the House. There were three Senate office buildings on Constitution Avenue NE, on the north side of the green in front of the Capitol building. Three House office buildings were lined up on Independence Avenue on the south side of the green. Time was precious, and one did not expect a Senate staffer to take the several minutes to walk across the green to attend a briefing in a House office building, or vice versa. And within the buildings, one did not expect the Republican staffers to walk over to the offices of the Democratic staffers. They are often referred to as the majority and the minority rather than Democrats and Republicans, with implied stature and power, and neither seemed to prefer to travel to the offices of the other.
For each of those first four meetings I presented my slide show of Seneca Falls and the historic sites. This was years before PowerPoint and little flash drives, requiring instead an awkward tray of slides. Getting someone’s attention is the most precious goal in working with Congress. Holding their attention is number two. The first slide was always a view of picturesque Van Cleef Lake looking over at the imposing historic Trinity Episcopal Church. There was a sprig of pink flowers on the edge of the picture. Then came several slides of the gigantic lock chambers down the street from Stanton’s home, which never failed to catch the attention of the men. I always extended a heartfelt invitation to come to Seneca Falls to see for themselves the beauty of the area and the compelling history. Then I would move into the history and the resources.
Fortunately, the park was favored by the House Subcommittee on National Parks and Insular Affairs’ chair Congressman Phil Burton, especially after his chief of staff, Dale Crane, drove up to Seneca Falls with his wife that spring of 1980 to tour the site of this new proposal. To ensure an enjoyable and memorable trip, Bert Fortner had brought a canoe up to Seneca Falls, and Crane steered his wife and me on a lake-based tour of Seneca Falls.
Based on the hearing they had held back on November 9, 1979, on all fifteen New Area Studies, the subcommittee did not need to hold a separate hearing on the Women’s Rights legislation, and they approved the bill May 9, 1980. The full Interior and Insular Affairs Committee approved the bill on May 14. The committee report was filed in the House on May 16, and on May 20 the full House of Representatives voted to approve H.R. 3, a newly created omnibus parks and public lands bill, which included the establishment of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. In order to expedite consideration of H.R. 3, the House then attached it to S. 2363, a noncontroversial amendment of the National Trails System Act, which passed on June 17, 1980. This is the equivalent of the speed of light for congressional approval.
Omnibus bills were common to facilitate enactment of Park Service legislation, which often included long lists of minor technical amendments and minor boundary changes that still required congressional approval. Including the Women’s Rights Park legislation in a pages-long omnibus bill perhaps lowered the attention it received as it moved through the House of Representatives. There is no way of knowing how this proposal might have been received by the members if it had been a stand-alone bill.
On the other side of the Capitol, the support of Senator Moynihan was aided by the powerful chief of staff for the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks, Tom Williams. Among Park Service staff, Tom had earned great admiration, and some degree of fear, for his influence in the Senate in determining whether a park would be authorized. I came back from lunch one day in the late fall of 1979 to find a disconcerting pink phone message centered on my desk: I was to telephone Tom Williams. I nervously called him and was even more nervous after he said he wanted me to meet him in Bar Harbor, Maine, in December, and do a flyover to check the boundary changes proposed in pending legislation for Acadia National Park. Staff can only do their field reviews when Congress is in recess. The boundary changes were relatively minor, but every change at the much beloved Acadia National Park was controversial.
We met on a Sunday night in Bar Harbor in a freezing and dark motel room where we dined on Cokes and crackers from the vending machines down the hall. No nearby restaurants were open that Sunday night in December. The next morning, I drove Tom to the nearby airport to find a tiny plane with just three seats. The pilot was standing at the front of the plane holding a fan that was blowing hot air into the nose, on the single engine. When the pilot decided the ice was melted off the engine, he got in and started it up. The runway was hard-frozen ice. The plane wobbled and lurched on the bumpy ice as we accelerated. Tom and I were sitting together behind the pilot, and Tom was squeezing my hand so hard I worried about a sprain as we banged along the ice before liftoff. His other hand repeatedly made the sign of the cross on his chest. We survived the overflight and a landing that was as terrifying as the takeoff. We subsequently made it back safely, and with much-reduced drama, to our home airports in Boston and Washington, and were best friends forever after.
The following spring, I was determined to make up for the Acadia National Park adventure and promote our cause by providing Tom with a fun, interesting, and comfortable tour of the proposed park in Seneca Falls. He flew into Syracuse in early April and drove his rental car to Seneca Falls. We had reservations to stay at the beautiful Taughannock Falls Inn, built in 1873, adjacent to Taughannock Falls State Park, an hour south of Seneca Falls. The charming inn was quite the opposite of the dark, gloomy, and cold motel in Bar Harbor. In the morning I drove Tom to the nearby state park marina, where an eighteen-foot open boat and captain were waiting to give us a tour up Cayuga Lake and into the Cayuga–Seneca Canal at the north end. Also joining us on board were Augie Sinicropi, head of the fledgling Urban Cultural Park, and the two Seneca Falls village planners, Bert Fortner and Phil Prigmore. We cruised up the lake up and into the canal on a gorgeous, sunny spring day. At the end of Washington Street, just north of the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, we passed into the lower lock chamber and then into the upper lock chamber and were quickly lifted forty-nine feet, a heart-stopping experience in a small open boat. We toured the proposed park sites and ended with a splendid wine, cheese, and pepperoni reception put on by Augie Sinicropi and the UCP board at the Gould Hotel. As it turned out, we stayed a little too long.
At dusk, Tom, Bert, Phil, the boat captain, and I boarded the small open boat for the return trip; it would take about an hour to get back to our starting marina. Halfway down the lake, a ferocious wind and rainstorm overtook our boat. As the wind continued to rise, the engine cut out, and the boat began drifting and heaving in high waves in the midst of violent rounds of lightning and thunder. By then it was pitch dark. Tom picked up an oar and furiously paddled, trying to direct the boat to the shore. We were extraordinarily lucky as the wind shifted direction and literally blew us into a small dock on the western shore. We all climbed out and walked up a steep and slippery hill to a back door. Soaked and dripping wet, with mud-covered shoes, we appealed for help, and the homeowner ushered us into his kitchen. We had no idea where we were—just somewhere on the western shore of Cayuga Lake. We used the kind owner’s telephone to call Augie, who drove down from Seneca Falls to rescue us and drive us back to our cars at the marina where it all began. For days I jumped every time the phone rang and did not sleep at all well for several nights after this nightmare, waiting for repercussions, which happily never arrived. Instead, Tom and I became even better friends.
The Senate hearing was delayed through the summer, and supporters were seriously fretting. Lucille Povero, the Stanton Foundation president, sent a bouquet of red roses to Senator Dale Bumpers, who telephoned her to thank her. Lucille also sent a bouquet to Congressman Burton. I was appealing to Tom Williams to call a hearing. But by then, everybody in the whole country with pending legislation wanted their Senate hearing so their bill could be enacted before December 31, when any pending legislation would die with the end of the two-year session. Also, there would be a new administration if Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. The Senate hearing on S. 2263 was finally scheduled for September 8, to the relief and joy of all of us working to make the park happen. Tom Williams probably was the engineer for scheduling the hearing.
A hearing on pending legislation brings together pressure from three separate organizations on the administration’s requisite testimony: the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the White House. The Park Service drafts the witness statement, including the all-important opening paragraph outlining support, or opposition, to the legislation. The draft is signed off by the director of the National Park Service and the assistant secretary for fish and wildlife, and then goes to the secretary of the Department of the Interior. There it is reviewed by the secretary’s office, the department’s budget office, and their legislative counsel. Finally, it is submitted to the OMB in the White House, which either confirms or revises the draft proposing the official position of the administration
The Office of Management and Budget is directed by the president. The top-level managers are chosen by the president and must also go through Senate confirmation. The staff are career, but with a mix of political appointees. OMB is across a driveway from the White House and coordinates closely with all the federal agencies as well as with the president. In September 1980, Jimmy Carter was sitting in the Oval Office across the way. President Carter would sit in that office just four more short months, and then Ronald Reagan would be sitting there and choosing his OMB staff. Fierce battles sometimes were triggered on an administration’s position on legislation, but for the witness statement supporting the Women’s Rights National Historical Park bill the administration’s position that September under Jimmy Carter was supportive.
Prior to the hearing, the Park Service submits the agency’s approved testimony to the subcommittee for their contemplation. The witness statements began with the all-important position of the administration. These statements also included a description of the proposal, and important issues to be considered.
I flew to Washington to attend the hearing. After opening statements by members of the committee, the hearing got down to business with the official witness for the Park Service presenting the position of the Carter administration. The committee members presiding sat at a long dais; the official witnesses faced them from about thirty feet away, looking up at the dais from a long table at floor level. The official witness that day was the deputy director of the National Park Service, Ira Hutchinson. He was the first African American deputy director for the Park Service. The official witness for a congressional hearing depended on the schedules of the directorate; the usual witnesses were the director, the deputy director, and the associate director for planning and design. Whoever testified, their assignment was to read the witness statement prepared by the Park Service’s legislative office and answer any questions that arose. Ira Hutchinson took his seat at the witness table. Surprising me, he requested that I sit beside him at the table. Generally, the legislative specialist from headquarters in Washington sat behind the official witness to offer notes or whisper information or suggested answers for specific questions; they did not usually sit up at the witness table. Sitting at the witness table put me on the firing line for answering questions. It was an honor to be asked to sit there and required me to quickly overcome my shock and calm my nerves.
I had been asked once earlier, in the spring of 1979, to sit at the witness table, when Hutchinson was the official witness for the proposed Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts. The value of the Olmsted original design drawings had been a volatile issue that was resolved with a new appraisal just days before the hearing, and I was prepared to answer questions on that subject. However, the question that arose back then was “When did Olmsted die?” Ira turned to me to answer. I could not remember if it was 1903 or 1905, agonized a few seconds, and said 1905. I was mortified when I later confirmed that my answer was wrong, but no one had challenged me. The memory of that hearing, however, did not serve to calm my nerves now.
Senator Paul Tsongas, a Democrat of Lowell, Massachusetts, began the questioning: “For the record, this is the testimony on S. 2263, the Women’s Rights National Historic [sic] Park, the State of New York, which I would assume would be the complement to the Men’s Rights National Historical Park.” Hutchinson replied, “Location yet to be determined.” We were shocked at this odd comment. The senator was not laughing or even smiling. And the following questions became even more surprising.
Hutchinson read his prepared testimony in support of the proposed park, in which he quoted the Declaration of Sentiments, “All men and women are created equal,” and listed the rights demanded in Seneca Falls, ending with the right of women to “secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” At the conclusion of Ira’s statement, Senator Tsongas had only two questions for him: “Would the color of the [Stanton house] be changed?” and, more concerning, “You are also taking an X-rated movie house. Was that the reason for the plan?” We were all stunned at the unexpected seemingly negative tone in the senator’s question. Ira took the safest course and gave no comment. The small cinder-block theater where X-rated movies were shown was located between the proposed new visitor center and the historic Wesleyan Chapel and would be demolished to establish a connection between the two structures. By this time, I was on edge and barely breathing. I was concerned by the unexpected criticism implied in the question; it did not seem that the senator was joking, and no one was laughing. Tsongas had been one of a group that initiated the creation of the Lowell National Historical Park, and that model of limited federal ownership had inspired my drafting of the legislation for the Women’s Rights Park. I was surprised that he seemed not to approve of legislation similar to what he had supported for Lowell.
The transcript recorded Tsongas as asking, “Regarding the chapel to be restored, I can’t understand that the laundromat is in, the front part, does that remain?”
I asked the senator if he would like to hear from the National Park Service. He said, “Please,” and I said, “We have done preliminary research on the building. I think you can tell from the photographs that on the side of the building the restoration will be relatively simple. They have simply bricked in the windows that were in the old Wesleyan Chapel. The roofline is the same as the original. We are almost positive that the back of the building has been extended as indicated by looking at the roof on the inside so it would be a very simple restoration job with the back. As for the front we are not 100% certain of its appearance in 1848. That would come through our historic structures report process if the park is authorized… . We need to do more research to determine if that is what the Wesleyan chapel actually looked like in 1848 but we feel it will be relatively simple to figure out how to restore the chapel to its general 1848 appearance.”1
Of course, it turned out that my optimism overrode reality, and later extensive research by the Park Service was unable to recover the appearance of the chapel, and the search was anything but simple. It was revealed over the years that everything I said was inaccurate, but I believed what I said was true when I said it. I had complete faith in the Park Service.
The senator also asked me if “the home next to the Stanton house, the modular home would be taken down?”
I answered, “Yes.”
I also believed at the time that the trailer would be removed, though it never was. It continued on as a ranger station with a telephone, desk, and bathroom much needed for staff working at the Stanton house.
Any person can request to testify at a hearing; however, those testifying must be confirmed by the subcommittee and must submit their formal written testimony prior to the hearing. Charlotte Conable from Rochester, New York, who had long been interested in the sites in Seneca Falls, had volunteered to testify in support of creating the new park and now did so. Charlotte was a graduate of Cornell, was on the university’s board of trustees, and was the coordinator of public policy projects at the Women’s Studies Program and Policy Center at George Washington University, just across town in Washington. She had also enlisted the support of her husband, Barber Conable (R), a longtime, well-respected congressman.
Rhoda Jenkins testified next. Rhonda was the great- granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a passionate supporter of honoring women’s history and the achievements of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She had traveled from her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Senator Tsongas listened to her testimony and then asked, “What do you think Seneca Falls would do tomorrow in the Democratic primary? Would they vote for women?” and, ominously, “Tell me, are the various women’s rights organizations prepared to help finance this effort?”
The senator, however, did conclude his questions to Jenkins with his first indication of support, even if lukewarm. “I think the concept has a great deal of merit, but I don’t think the federal government should proceed on these kinds of adventures unless there is a very clear commitment on everybody’s part to participate otherwise you just end up in a quagmire.” The hearing stenographer recorded no response from Jenkins.
Attorney E. Barry Bradshaw testified last. Bradshaw was general counsel for Goulds Pumps, by far the largest of the five industries then in operation in Seneca Falls. The company’s massive plant and headquarters were at 240 Fall Street, prominent on the highway leading from the west into downtown Seneca Falls and just a few blocks from the Wesleyan Chapel on Fall Street. Goulds Pumps fabricated pumps of all sizes, from the enormous ones used in oil fields all the way down to pumps used in a personal motorboat or, smaller yet, at a kitchen sink. Barry Bradshaw had testified in courts all over the world for decades, and he brought his experience, wisdom, and vision into the hearing room with great effect. He was also the elected deputy mayor of the village of Seneca Falls, and so it could be said that he represented the will of the people there. He was also impressive in stature, at six feet, three inches, and had a strong, deep voice.
Barry was not a man to be easily distracted from his mission to support enactment of the legislation, beginning with a favorable action by the subcommittee. With a grand gesture, he set to one side his official written testimony that had previously been submitted to the subcommittee. Instead, he began answering the concerns of Senator Tsongas. He assured the senator that Seneca Falls was standing up for the opportunities and challenges of this new endeavor and was not just looking for a job-creating economic development program in the guise of a national park. He reported that in the village of seven thousand residents there were then four thousand manufacturing jobs. He described the Hall of Fame created by the community. He emphasized the new, 450-acre historic preservation district created by the Seneca Falls Village Board as a direct support to the hoped-for new national park, and a substantive show of community support for the new national park. He stressed the recent hiring of village architects and planners Bert Fortner and Phil Prigmore, who he noted were sitting directly behind him in the hearing room. Their mission was to create the preservation program for the historic village including signage, and façade restoration programs for the downtown district. He also clarified the situation of the cinder-block theater that showed X-rated movies, which would need to be torn down. This small theater operated with children’s movies during the day and adult movies after 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. (There was a grand historic movie theater in Geneva where first-run movies played.)
Barry also described how the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation was working to develop an Urban Cultural Park in Seneca Falls. The new UCP program coming out of Albany was an early heritage area program that melded historic preservation, economic development, and recreation with tourism. Barry stressed that the UCP would be supporting economic development in the village, and that would not be the mission of the national park. He also pointed out that there were a dozen residents of Seneca Falls attending the hearing with him. Goulds Pumps had arranged and paid for their travel to Washington to demonstrate community support for the proposed park.
Senator Tsongas asked, “Do you think if we pass this we ought to make it contingent upon the State having a park there as well?” Barry answered that the state Urban Cultural Park was also in the legislative phase, and “I believe we would like to have this commitment without that provision if it is possible.” He then deftly switched the topic to the $100,000 the village had spent so far on the project, from a total village budget of just under $2 million. He described the village application for a federal Urban Development Action Grant of $5.5 million, to be directed to local business. The senator continued with his concern that the community would not stand up to its commitments. Barry countered that competition among the business owners would encourage them to keep up with the preservation program. Tsongas ended on an ominous note: “You might inform them that to the extent they do drag their heels, it diminishes the possibility of this thing being passed.” Barry Bradshaw was acutely sensitive to the senator’s concerns and reassured him that they would be positively addressed in Seneca Falls.
Tsongas’s questions were unexpected and surprisingly negative, but the hearing witnesses never went off message into contention, as might have been the case with more combustible witnesses. Attorney Barry Bradshaw might well have saved the legislation from impossible strictures of matching the schedule for the New York UCP program. If Senator Tsongas had demanded the UCP be approved before the federal legislation could pass, the park would very likely have missed the open window of opportunity with the outgoing Carter administration. Tsongas did finally allow the legislation to move to a positive vote out of the subcommittee.
Stanton Foundation president Lucille Povero submitted written testimony, which included a surprise request that the legislation be amended to include the Harriet Tubman home in Auburn, the Susan B. Anthony house in Rochester, and the Geneva home of Elizabeth Blackwell, who in 1849 was the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Lucille’s requests were not added to the final bill; the proposal had not been studied by the National Park Service for eligibility, nor was there evidence of community or property owner support for adding the three sites, all required before favorable congressional consideration.
It required an army of supporters to move this proposal through both houses of Congress and on to the president in less than twelve months. In 1980, there was no email, and no fax. Federal Express began operation in 1973, but the Park Service had not approved its use until 1982. There was just the desktop telephone, and not even the kind of phones that would allow walking around; I purchased a twenty-five-foot curly extension cord to connect my receiver with the base so that I could pace around my office in Boston during especially long or stressful calls. Every day was at least one more phone call with Peggy Lipson, keeping me informed of proceedings in Washington, while I would relay actions in our office and in Seneca Falls. Plus phone calls to the Stanton Foundation and to the village planners every day. Good humor and good relationships were paramount. As Peggy said in a 2020 interview, the good relationships created between the Park Service legislative staff in Washington and the committee staffers on the Hill enabled progress that might have taken longer, likely even years longer, to gain authorization of the Women’s Rights Park. And good relations between the Park Service and Seneca Falls were critical to keeping the momentum of support going. We were forging strong friendships while we were supporting the proposal.
I guessed that the legislation also benefited from a sea of elegant navy blazers. During my several trips to Capitol Hill to promote the legislation, I was struck by the numbers of women in the halls and elevators wearing navy blazers over silk dresses or blouses. The male staffers generally wore chinos and a bright white shirt, bright silk tie, and a well-tailored navy-blue blazer. Aha. The women in blue blazers were announcing they were professional staff, not support staff. Professional women staffers working in the offices of Congress were fairly new, and they were bonding together to strengthen their position, it seemed to me. I felt confident there was a network of women staffers excited about the possible new park and who were promoting it to their members, just as Peggy Lipson had promoted the park to Director Whalen among an otherwise all-male management. I did not reach out to these women to promote the park; in the friendly environment of 1980, I could promote the park to the subcommittee staff, and answer all their questions, but full-on lobbying as a federal employee was risky. I calculated their support would happen without my intervention.
Congress had not completed its work for the year when it adjourned for the 1980 election season. That meant there would be a lame-duck session after the election. If action on the park legislation was not completed before the Ninety-Sixth Congress finished its work, the process would have to start over again when the Ninety-Seventh Congress convened in January. With the new Congress, things would be very different. For the first time since 1955, Democrats would not control the Senate. Senator Bumpers would no longer chair the Senate parks subcommittee. He and his staff would have to defer to the new Republican majority.
The deadline for expiration of the pending legislation for the Women’s Rights Park and other bills affecting the Park Service was fast approaching. On December 3, 1980, the House and Senate subcommittee staffs worked together to draft the House Conference Report 1520 on S. 2363. The conference report addressed eighteen topics, each a “title.” Title XVI was the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Both the whole House and full Senate voted to approve the conference report the same day. An intense day it probably was, as Congress worked toward its eventual last day of December 16. The legislation was presented to President Carter on December 18, and after a tense wait by those in Seneca Falls, Boston, and Washington, Carter signed it into law, P.L. 96–607, on December 28, while recuperating from a broken collarbone. It was one of twelve pieces of legislation Carter signed into law that day, the last day he exercised his presidential authority to sign acts of Congress into law.
In all probability the legislation would not have been resuscitated after the change in administration. President Reagan’s new secretary of the interior, James Watt, soon announced that there were too many national parks, and some should be deauthorized. The new administration killed off the program of submitting twelve new park proposals to Congress every year. The funding for that program was eliminated in the fiscal year 1981 budget.
Despite a less than friendly new administration, once Congress created the park in 1980, we were not finished with legislation. As the park in Seneca Falls began to take shape, it became clear that amendments were needed to the park enabling law to address changing needs and conditions. Part of this was the result of Lee Patchen being voted in as mayor of Waterloo in 1983. Mayor Patchen was very supportive of the new park and wanted our presence and involvement in Waterloo. In the enabling legislation, the two sites in Waterloo had not been authorized for purchase by the Park Service. The congregation that owned the M’Clintock house, however, had meanwhile built and moved to a new building south of town. No longer using its in-town buildings, the congregation was most eager to sell the then vacant church and adjoining M’Clintock house parsonage to the Park Service. The owners of the house on the other side of the M’Clintock house also became eager to sell their home to the Park Service. Once the park publicized the historic importance of the M’Clintock house, the occasional visitor had ruined their former sense of privacy. More was needed than simple technical assistance from the Park Service.
The 1980 law authorizing the park did not give the Park Service the authority to become owners of the Waterloo properties; authorization to acquire the historic M’Clintock house or other properties would require congressional action. The Park Service accordingly proposed new legislation that would give it the authority to purchase all three properties: the church, the M’Clintock house, and the private residence on the west side. There was no outcry in Waterloo. The community could see that the unused and failing church building and boarded-up historic house next door were a dangerous blight. The Park Service regional office OK’d the new legislative proposal, on the condition it included explicit direction from Congress for the Park Service to demolish the church. Congressional staff made no objection to the demolition after I traveled to Washington to meet with them and show my photographs of the abandoned church with the bulging brick walls held in place only with long metal rods stretched from side to side inside the church and one-by-four boards bolted to the outside of the brick walls.
But Congress, it seemed, did not want to be seen as authorizing demolition of a church. Congress enacted Public Law 98–402 on August 28, 1984, which amended the law establishing the park, to permit the secretary of the interior to acquire title in fee simple to the M’Clintock House and related structures at 14 and 16 East Williams Street, Waterloo. Section 1601(d) addressed the church demolition issue by adding, “Within two years of the acquisition of the property … the Secretary shall have removed all structures from the property that are not relevant to the historic integrity of the McClintock house”—and no mention was included that one of the structures to be demolished was a church.
The park hired a contractor to carefully demolish the church, and the M’Clintock house was stabilized. Funding to restore the house was awarded just prior to the time I transferred from the park to working in Washington. The house is now fully restored and open to the public.
The owners of the Hunt house were at the time still unwilling to sell their home to the Park Service. I continued with my strategy of choosing the possible and not wading into territory that could raise the ire of the administration, the Park Service, or the communities. In 2000, further legislation authorized the purchase of the Hunt house for inclusion in the park.
Additional legislation enacted during my tenure as superintendent also included raising the cap on funding for land acquisition and development, and authorizing the acquisition of additional parcels around the Stanton house so that the property could be accurately interpreted. Legislation also removed the Amelia Bloomer house from the authorizing legislation. Park Service research determined that the supposed Bloomer house close to the Stanton house had been rented for only a few weeks and that Bloomer had actually lived in a house several blocks away, which had been demolished.
It took only a very quick eleven months for Congress to pass the legislation during the Carter administration. It is probable it would never have passed during the administration of Ronald Reagan.