Page 72 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS FOCUS ON THE MISSION

“My first impulse was to deep-six the idea myself,” Veblen recalled.
“Then I got to thinking. The idea was a good one; in fact, it might even be
classified as a nifty one. Maybe the Park Service was overreacting.” But
Veblen soon learned that Mrs. Shouse was not the only roadblock to estab-
lishing a performing arts center at Wolf Trap Farm. “I went to see Director
Hartzog, who came across as a solid citizen, and after some preliminaries,
he gave me the full story,” Veblen recalled. The national park system was
woefully underfunded, with a budget that couldn’t even sustain the coun-
try’s existing facilities, let alone any new ones. Even if he could get Mrs.
Shouse to relinquish control of Wolf Trap, there was no way Congress and
the Budget Bureau would approve new expenditures while the Parks Service
was unable to meet its present obligations. How could the service justify
taking on a money sump like Wolf Trap when the rest of the system was
falling apart?
“The Wolf Trap Park problem was a complex one. For certain, noth-
ing would happen until the property had been deeded to the government,
and the deeding couldn’t happen until Congress authorized it,” Veblen
explained. “Congress wouldn’t authorize it unless the Park Service and the
Budget Bureau approved, a senator sponsored it, and the appropriate com-
mittees of both houses concurred on the legislation. Mrs. Shouse would-
n’t donate if she couldn’t control the artistic elements. The Park Service
insisted on total control: If they owned it, they would manage it, period.
Talk about a ‘catch-22!’”
Veblen was almost ready to throw in the towel, but President
Kennedy’s words kept ringing in his ears: Figure out how to put parks
where the people are. And then the light dawned. If he could make the
Park Service’s performing arts element self-supporting, the preservation
element of the project could be fully justified. The newly passed Outdoor
Recreation Act authorized the secretary of the interior to accept provisional
donations of land to facilitate the development of local, state, and regional
parks. Why not have Mrs. Shouse deed Wolf Trap Farm to the Secretary
of the Interior? Then Congress could authorize the establishment of a park
to be facilitated by transfer of the deeded land to the Park Service rather
than to a state entity. A foundation endowed by Mrs. Shouse could be
established to construct the performance venues and support Wolf Trap’s
future performances. The Park Service would plan the park’s physical facil-
ity and manage it; the foundation would plan, pay for, and manage the

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