Cartwheel Expert Teri Gage Tumbling To Pullman National Monument

PULLMAN — Sometimes, when I drive past a National Park ranger, dressed in their olive-green uniforms and wide brim caps, patrolling the grounds of my National Monument neighborhood I can't help myself.

I crank down the window of the ol' 1988 Dodge Ram, and do my best Yogi Bear impression: "Hey ranger, have you seen my pic-a-nic basket?"

They almost never laugh. But here's good news: Pullman's first National Monument Supt. Teri Gage not only chuckles at a darn good joke, she's got plenty of pic-a-nic basket-finding experience, too.

"Oh, I've found picnic baskets. Last summer, on the islands at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore where I work, we not only found a picnic basket but a whole picnic spread that was abandoned," Gage said. "We also find that people often leave one shoe behind."

In some ways, Chicago's historic Pullman neighborhood has a lot in common with abandoned picnics and left-behind sneakers. In the 1960s, there was a City Hall proposal to bulldoze the entire neighborhood to make way for an industrial park. And folks who live in George Pullman's "most perfect" factory town can tell you all about the state-funded preservation efforts that have failed to revive the Hotel Florence, put a roof on the Market Hall ruins and left the historic clocktower locked behind a barbed-wire fence.

And five years after former President Barack Obama designated Pullman as Chicago's only National Monument folks down here are still waiting to see if so many predictions of a tourism and economic boom will come true.

But Gage's appointment, which comes months before the newly renovated clocktower visitor center is set to open, seems to signal we're getting closer to finding out.

Gage, a 32-year National Park service veteran, accepted the job Pullman site unseen. She still hadn't toured Pullman when we chatted last week. When I asked, half jokingly if she knew what she's getting herself into, Gage answered with matter-of-fact Midwestern charm that signaled she'll do just fine dealing with cynical city folks, like me.

"To answer your question: Yes, I applied for the job," she said, "and I'm coming voluntarily."

The chance to take over a newly established National Monument is an opportunity that doesn't come around very often, Gage said. She's excited to help get the park set on the "best path forward," and she'll know better what that is when she takes over in April.

Gage scored her first National Parks Service job when she was a high school junior in Munising, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. A high school counselor recommended her for a gig as a clerk at the Painted Rocks National Lakeshore that paid $5.02 an hour.

"It was dumb luck. My guidance counselor saw that I was a good student, very responsible, mature for my age and knew there was a financial need in my family," Gage said. "I fell into a job that turned out to be my dream career and a public service mission that has become almost like my ministry. The perfect fit for me."

Gage was raised by her grandparents, who she calls "mom and dad." Locally, they were well-respected outdoors people. Her late grandmother, Kewpie Gage, was an athletic sharp-shooting, survival instructor. Her 94 year-old grandfather, Edgar Gage, once an expert hunter and trapper, still lives in their family home.

"We lived very modestly, more of a subsistence," Teri Gage said. "In the summers we camped in the woods more than we were at home."

Over the years, Supt. Gage worked as a budget technician and administrative manager in national parks in the Midwest. Before taking on her current role managing operations at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, she worked in Arkansas at the Buffalo National River Gage and was acting superintendent at the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site.

She did a stint at the Horace Albright Training Center at the Grand Canyon.

"Working at the Grand Canyon was an amazing experience. It's hard to put into words how big and vast it is, and how it makes you feel like such a small part of the universe," Gage said. "It's not similar to Pullman at all."

Gage's expects her tenure in Pullman will be relatable to time she spent at the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas, where she was the first permanent employee.

"It had similarities to Pullman as historic site. The school building in very bad shape and needed to be completely renovated as the park headquarters and visitor center," she said. "There's even an overlap in the histories. Brown vs. Board of Education is civil rights story with a connection to the Pullman porters and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters."

A footnote in that story that Gage says she learned during her four years in Topeka is that African-American railroad worker Oliver Brown was selected to be the plaintiff in the historic school-segregation lawsuit that ended in the precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court decision because his membership in the union made him less likely to lose his job.

Gage says she fully expects to experience a healthy amount of culture shock that will come when she and her husband, who also works for the National Parks Service, moves to Chicago from tiny Wisconsin town on Lake Superior with a population of 500 people.

Still, Gage says her experience as a National Parks missionary-of-sorts has prepared her for the challenges that come with integrating the needs of a historic site with the sometimes competing desires of the people who live there.

"When a new park comes into a community there is frequently animosity and heartburn and bitterness toward the park. That's common and understandable," she said. "The thing is, I have job that I seriously love and there's nothing greater than having the opportunity to build relationships with people who live around the park that lead to great things. What people will find out is that I'm a solid Midwestern girl. There's nothing mysterious or glamorous about me."

But don't think for a minute that there's nothing extraordinary about the Pullman National Monument's new superintendent.

When pressed to disclose a secret about herself, Gage didn't hesitate. "I am an expert cartwheeler," she said.

I asked if she might prove it Wednesday when she visits Pullman for the first time to mark the National Monument's 5-year anniversary.

"We'll see," Gage said. "Maybe someday."

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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