Characters in the Hungry Mother story

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

They’re grown men, retired now even, but Glenn Moorer and Jim Kelly just can’t leave their Mother.
The men came to Hungry Mother State Park within two weeks of each other in 1973, and now, they’ve retired together, this month getting their first feel of life as retirees from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
While they may no longer be on the park payroll, no way are they leaving the park with its lake, its beach, the embracing mountains and the people who come to share in their beauty.
As he and Kelly talked about their careers Thursday, a visitor strolled among the exhibits in the park’s Discovery Center, and Moorer said he had to quell the urge to walk over and ask the man if he could be of help.
And before an interview with Kelly and Moorer was over, Moorer grabbed a broom and swept a section of the floor.
“Hungry Mother will always be a part of me,” said Moorer, who admitted to being in the park “every other day.”
Kelly started out at Natural Tunnel State Park in 1971 as a seasonal employee with no plan of making a career in the state park system. In fact, he at first turned down an invitation to interview for a job at Douthat State Park, but two weeks later, tried out for the job and won the maintenance foreman post there.
Moorer started as a ranger at Hungry Mother in 1973, two weeks after Kelly arrived as park manager. Thirteen years ago, Kelly became district manager, overseeing several parks, but was always based at Hungry Mother where he and his growing family were provided a home.
For Kelly, the exposure to a variety of managers is critical to one who may one day assume a leadership role. Working under a single supervisor, he said, develops a tendency to think their way is the only way, when others can provide different perspectives.
For Kelly, it’s hard to see his position in the park as having been just a job.
“Work is your hobby a lot of times,” Kelly said. “You start a project and you want to finish it, and you’d get in trouble at home.”
Moorer said it takes special families to support park employees that are often called out at night to let in late-arriving cabin guests or respond to a water leak or other problem. Even then, he said, it’s a pleasure to come to work.
“That’s not to say you don’t have problems,” Kelly said. “You do. The perception of visitors and the reality is not the same.”
Kelly said the park is like a small town with a hotel, a restaurant, a water and sewer system, an electrical grid. Any can require immediate attention at any time.
That was part of the appeal of Moorer’s job. “The diversity of the job is what is attractive,” he said, “The change of seasons, the change in attendance with the seasons. The ability to be outdoors is the main thing.”
Kelly said there can be at times difficult personnel problems that must be handled. “It’s not all fun and games, but I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”
With the rare exception, park visitors are pleasant to park staff.
“One of the best things about working here is people don’t come here to have a bad time,” he said. They anticipate a good experience and park staff are there to enhance it, the men said.
“I heard years ago, and have used it many times, that you manage for customer service, not staff convenience,” Kelly said.
“Over the years, the Hungry Mother team has been good to do that,” Moorer said. “It’s a team, a family. You don’t get that with many jobs.”
The park system in the past used to move employees around, and that provided the advantage of working under different supervisors, Kelly said, but at a cost: “You didn’t get as involved with the community,” he said.
In later years, managers like him could put down roots and become part of the community. Hungry Mother, he said, has been a part of the lives of so many community members who worked summers there, and many of them still live in the vicinity.
“There have been thousands of employees out here,” Kelly said. “Many are still in the community.”
Moorer said at his retirement party, he looked across the gathering and “there was a story with every person at Hungry Mother. It’s a neat feeling to be able to tell a story about every person in the room.”
Both men lauded the Friends of Hungry Mother, a group of people Kelly said are “always supportive” and “keep you honest. Living here in the park, you don’t see things as visitors do.” The Friends, he said, brought that perspective.
“They’ve been a really great group of people,” Kelly said. “I don’t know of a time we went to them for support that they turned us down. They funded a lot of projects out here.”
Kelly and Moorer have seen more growth in the park in the last two decades than came since perhaps the beginning of the park system in the 1930s. In the early ‘70s, the park was open to overnight guests only from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but it remained accessible for hiking.
The greatest growth came after the passage of a bond referendum in 1992, one of the most strongly voter-supported bonds ever in the state, with about 60 percent of voters in favor of the measure that brought roughly $10 million in improvements to the park.
“There were more changes in the next 10 years than in the previous 50 or 60 years,” Moorer said. Among them was construction of the Discovery Center, development of the park’s lodge, paving, and burying electrical lines underground.
Later growth saw the addition of what would become Camp Burson that had been a private campground just south of the park.
Now the park has expanded again to the northwest, adding some 700 acres of Walker Mountain where trails are under development.
Asked about especially memorable days during their time at the park, perhaps the meeting of a bear on the lake trail, Kelly and Moorer could not settle on any that stood above the rest.
“Every month there was something,” Moorer said. “That’s the beauty of the job. That kind of thing happens all the time.”
For him, seeing families grow in the park has been a special part of his career. “Family interactions is the greatest thing,” he said. “Families are back with their children and grandchildren. There are a lot of repeat customers. It’s pretty neat when you get to see three generations coming back.”
Moorer is appreciative of other agencies, like the state’s game and inland fisheries department, that has worked with Hungry Mother on projects like habitat improvement.
“A great thing, too, is that it’s hard to find anyone this park hasn’t affected somehow,” Moorer said. That’s a tribute to the diversity of activities in the park, from the triathlon and volunteer workdays to activities by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Blue Ridge Job Corps, Stewardship Virginia and home-schooling families and environmental education, he said.
For Kelly, a sense that he was his own boss grew as park management changed over the years.
“We have more autonomy now,” he said. “Managers are told to go forth and do good. The parameters are wide open. Do nothing illegal, unethical or immoral or you’ll get fired. You decide what programming you do, although [the department] may say emphasize children in nature. The budget and management is pretty much in the park.”
Kelly has enjoyed watching the cadre of young park employees who came aboard with him and Moorer grow up and start families. Being of like mind and interest, the park employees bonded across the state and rose together through the system in leadership positions.
“It’s a lifetime of memories and a lifetime of friendships,” Moorer said.
Many current park managers, Moorer observed, got their start under Kelly at Hungry Mother.
“That speaks highly of the park,” Moorer said. “It’s a good training ground for state park employees.”
When Moorer is not back in the park that he can’t ever really leave, he’ll be on the road with Park Ranger Geoff Hall, on Hall’s days off, visiting fairs and festivals with their traveling Southern Kettle Korn operation. Even then, it’s a safe bet he’ll be thinking about his next foray with the game and fish folks he’ll help with creel surveys and fish tagging. He’ll probably teach fishing workshops in the park, and plans to work with the park Friends.
“It’s hard to walk away,” he said.
So will Kelly, who plans to help out in the park, remodel his rental properties and finish remodeling the house in Marion that will be his first home outside the park.
“I have a lot of mixed feelings,” Kelly said. “But it’s time to let someone else take over.”

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