Sue McMahon Oral History Transcripts

Sue talks about being an outdoorsy person growing up in western Pennsylvania, going to college to become a physical education teacher, but quickly switching majors to parks and recreation with a biology emphasis.She teaches at Outward Bound during college and is hired in 1978 into a non-exempt, full-time, GS-5 position to be the group leader for the YACC at Erie NWR. Her supervisor, Bill McCoy, is very open-minded about hiring and promoting women, and within a year, Sue is promoted to a GS-7 as the group leader in charge of the entire program, with a GS-5 male group leader working under her.Her next positions are at the Service’s Job Corps Center located at Iroquois NWR in western New York.She is hired by John Stasko, the Works Programs Officer, who becomes a close colleague throughout her career.In this position, Sue learns how to help young people succeed, she learns about the value of being part of the community, and she coordinates with maintenance and administrative staff to meet the needs of the refuge. Throughout this interview, you learn about how YACC and the Job Corps operated on FWS refuges and how they were run in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. 

Sue talks about how Hal O’Connor, the Patuxent Research Center Director, wants Patuxent to be run as the national wildlife refuge national wildlife refuge
A national wildlife refuge is typically a contiguous area of land and water managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  for the conservation and, where appropriate, restoration of fish, wildlife and plant resources and their habitats for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans.

Learn more about national wildlife refuge that it is, and he hires John Stasko to be its first refuge manager.Then, in the late ‘80’s, Sue is hired by John Stasko to be the Facility Manager at the PRR. Sue really learns how to be an effective supervisor in this position, which has the challenge of managing the men who have been working for many, many years and have never had a female supervisor.She talks about how her law enforcement training was a significant event in her life, and then about law enforcement and one particularly frightening incident at the refuge.Realizing there is a limited career path as a facility manager, she takes the classes she needs to become eligible for the refuge manager series.Sue does end up becoming the PRR manager in 1996 when John transfers to the National Biological Service, when the research arm of the Fish and Wildlife Service is moved into a separate bureau within the Department of Interior, and the refuge is moved from Region 8 to Region 5. She talks about the development, operation, transfer, and return of the National Visitor Center and the acquisition of the Ft. Meade tract which happened while she was at Patuxent Research Refuge.

Sue’s last position in the Fish and Wildlife Service, as the Deputy Regional Refuge Chief in Region 5 (northeast region), lasted twelve years.She talks about her close and very effective partnership with Regional Refuge Chief Tony Léger, and her role of implementing the big picture that Tony saw and articulated, nurturing young employees, and the lasting friendships she developed in the Fish and Wildlife Service.She highlights her greatest professional challenge and some of the successes for which she knows she played a strong role in supporting the efforts of both field and regional staff.