Close Look at the Gettysburg Firings By National Park Service

“The rationale given for the dismissals is not supported by evidence from the employees’ records, claimed Cochran, who is also a full-time landscape preservationist at GNMP.

The Interior Department “determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment,” according to a letter sent to Nathaniel Bauder, one of the five fired GNMP employees.

That is “blatantly not correct,” said Bauder, who was about five weeks short of completing his probationary period.

In his last performance evaluation, a supervisor said he had “exceeded expectations,” said Bauder.

All five Gettysburg employees had excellent performance reviews, even though “the same form letter with the same cowardly script claimed otherwise,” Cochran wrote in a Facebook post Monday.

One of the dismissed employees, Wanda Poole, was an administrative assistant at the battlefield, and Jessica Walker was an archivist at Eisenhower, Cochran said.

Bauder and two others, Leon Moxley and Mike Haines, were assigned to GNMP’s bed-and-breakfast program, through which two historic homes on the battlefield are available for overnight accommodations.

The three maintained the houses and adjoining grounds and did turnovers between guests’ stays, Bauder said, although 75% of his time was spent doing landscape work, such as repairing fences, mowing, and clearing fallen trees.

Bauder said he also did work as a wildland firefighter, participating in prescribed burns and even responding to fire last summer at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Bauder hopes to challenge the termination through a congressional inquiry since the job “was not only a childhood dream, but a dream that I worked hard to make a reality,” he said.

He grew up in the Finger Lakes region of New York, but his family visited Gettysburg when he was a child, where he would ask the rangers how they got their jobs, Bauder said.

He earned a master’s degree in public history and a graduate certificate in cultural resource management. When he came to Gettysburg as in intern in 2019, “I fell in love with the work and mission of the NPS (and my wife),” he wrote in the Facebook post.

After working the next few years as a seasonal hire, he said a chance at a full-time position came about in March 2024 when the park opened the two historic homes to public leasing.

Cochran, who remembered first meeting Bauder at a chainsaw safety class, said he is “passionate about history.”

Bauder had just finished a full shift around 3 p.m. Friday when he was instructed to see the head of maintenance, who told him and one of his coworkers they would be receiving a letter of termination, he said. The letter didn’t show up in his government email account until 6:30 p.m., so he didn’t see it until Saturday morning, when he went to collect personal items, he said.

NPS administrators in Gettysburg have been transparent and “supportive through all of this,” Bauder said.

Cochran said he has been communicating with GNMP Superintendent Kristina Heister over the last three weeks as the two have shared information.

For now, Cochran has gathered all the termination letters from AFGE Council 270, including six from Fort McHenry National Monument, 15 from Shenandoah National Park, and at least 10 others, and passed them to the union’s district leadership, he said.

AFGE is the largest federal employee union, representing 800,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia, according to its website.

“This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley is quoted as saying in a statement released Friday.

With the administration’s quick start on Inauguration Day, “I’ve been living on a lot of rage and a lot of caffeine these last three weeks,” Cochran said.

Park service officials in Gettysburg claimed they would respond by late Tuesday morning, but no response was forthcoming by 5 p.m. Wednesday.”

Please contact your Congressional representatives to let them know that you object to this potentially illegal firing of staff staff.

Call the House of Representatives Switchboard to contact your Congressperson (202) 224-3121.

When you call you will likely have a live operator who will connect you to your Congressperson, so make sure you know the name of your Congressperson!

Note: The feature photo is of Nathaniel Bauder with wife Eva Blankenhorn.