Dedicated: Service: Her Job is to Serve the Public
By ANITA STACKHOUSE-HITE, The Porterville Recorder, Calif.
Sep. 8–Forty one years ago, a Philadelphia mother put her 2-year-old daughter in front of the family television set to keep her entertained for a moment or two.
The Pennsylvania State University “Nittany” Lions were playing football, but what was showing didn’t matter. She just wanted her daughter to be occupied.
What the mother of three could not have foreseen was that a moment in time would became a lifelong obsession for little Tina Terrell, now Porterville’s new U.S. Forrest supervisor.
Terrell has held her new post for about six months.
“I don’t know why, but at that age, when that game was over, I told my mother that I was going to be a ‘Nitny Lion,’” Terrell said, using her toddler voice and laughing out loud about the memory. “To this day I can’t tell you what happened to me watching that game, but I can tell you more about Penn State football than you ever knew existed or ever wanted to know. I love it and everything about it. Joe Paterno is God.”
She’s kidding, of course, and breaks out into a full body laugh in her office chair to prove it. However, that statement drives home the degree of reverence Terrell has for all things Penn State, including Paterno, it’s esteemed head football coach.
It also telegraphs the message that the energetic forest supervisor knows something about what it means to have a sense of dedication. Not commitment — dedication.
Terrell, 43, never wavered from her desire to become Nittany Lion. The bright young woman graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in forest science. She is as dedicated to caring for natural resources and education others on the value of them as she is about Penn State football.
She became enamored with natural resources, and the need to help preserve them, while running track one day. She ran competitive distance races in the 2-mile category for a few years.
“Coach asked us to run four miles that day,” Terrell said in her rapid fire cadence. “I’m an outdoor person, and I was on such a high that day I ran six miles and didn’t realize it. Then, I just stopped and looked around at the trees. Everything was just beautiful. I knew I would do something in life that had to do with nature, with natural resources.”
During that six mile run, the 17-year-old did not know what career would eventually be hers. As things sometimes happen, a friend of hers new somebody who knew somebody who worked in the forest service.
Today, Terrell works in a job she adores, and for the public, which she serves. The public, she says, is her employer.
“It’s true, I’m a public servant and I’m proud of it,” said the admitted workaholic. “We have been given a gift, this land is ours. What we leave to others, for future generations, depends on how we treat that gift. We have an obligation to get it right. I have an obligation to the public to help get it right by helping them understand how to use the gift we have.”
Nearly half of Terrell’s life has been consumed in dedication to natural resources and the public she serves:
1984 — Terrell served as a temporary forestry technician working for the Forest Inventory and Analysis staff at the Northeastern Experiment Station in Broomall, Pa.
1984-1989 — she worked as a Field Inventory Forester and Supervisory Field Inventory Forester, working in Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Arkansas and Mississippi.
1989 — she transferred to the Six Rivers National Forest as the Small Sales Officer.
1991-1994 — worked at the regional office in Region 5 in Sacramento at the Remote Sensing Lab as an Inventory Forester working on every national forest in California except for the four forests in southern California,
1994 — transferred to the National Forests in Alabama, working at Tuskegee University as the forest liaison officer. She managed the Tuskegee University Forest Resources Program recruiting future Forest Service leaders into the agency. The program was the first program developed to educate and recruit blacks to join the forestry profession, or work for the Forest Service.
1997 — transferred to the Southwestern Region to become the District Ranger on the Tonto Basin Ranger District, Tonto National Forest in Ariz., and managed more than 690,000 acres
2000 — transferred to the Washington Office, as a legislative specialist in the Programs, Legislation and Communications Deputy Area.
2004 — she became the Forest Supervisor of the Cleveland National Forest responsible for managing over 450,000 acres of national forest system lands in Orange, Riverside, and San Diego County, respectively. She supervises over 440 employees during the summer with a very large and complex fire program.
“She is very, very high energy,” said Mary Chislock, public affairs director, who works with Terrell. “Its a good thing she is high energy. We’re an emergency organization. We do a lot of fire fighting at all hours. It’s a major balancing act. If you were to compare it with a Rubik’s cube, you’re always trying to line up different sides, and having good open and on-gonng communication with the public and employees. The challenges are endless with natural resource issues and the human dimension issues of employees.”
Chislock has been in forest service for 17 years. She likes what she sees in Terrell as the new forest supervisor. As such, Terrell oversees a budget of $30 million, about 460 employees and 1.2 million acres of forest land, extending across Hume Lake, Hot springs, Tule River, Kern River Ranger District, Tulare and Kings counties.
“She is doing a great job,” Chislock said. “She brings a lot of experience to the table, and has initiated a lot of change in recreation and is implementing long-term programs. [Terrell] has a leadership team of about 10 managers. She is considered a line officer, and the rangers are consider-
er officers. Staff are advisory and consultants to the line officers. When programs come down, we have overall responsibility for them. For example, the recreation program — all the camp grounds, lands and minerals, special uses and many of the services we offer to the public. There is a lot of policy that we implement. Implementing long-term programs is one of the things she enjoys doing wherever she is.”
Quarterbacking an expansive team is a challenge Terrell has met wherever she work, and the single professional has worked in a host of states all across the country. She is on a mission, one person at a time, one tree at a time. That’s why developing programs that last are important to her.
“It’s not what I can do, it’s what the program can do for others,” she said. “I oversee public lands for the benefit of all. I like to create programs wherever I go so they can stay without me. I created a program at Tuskegee University where a student can go to two universities and get two degrees and the forest service would fund most of it. My pride and joy is the first student who participated in the program, a program that still exists today.”
The program launched in 1995. That first student finished Tuskegee University after three years, and transferred to Duke. At the end of the first year at Duke, she received her bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee. At the end of the second year at Duke, she obtained master’s degree from there. She went on to earn a Ph.D. North Carolina state University.
“Here is someone I met who said she wanted to go to Duke, and because of the connection, I was able to get her into Duke,” Terrell said. “I was able to develop nine agreements at nine universities like that.”
Her ability to dedicate herself, to people and natural resources, or whatever is important to her, comes from her mother Lucille Terrell, 69, she said. She and her sisters, Michelle Terrell, 44, assistant to the district attorney, lives in Atlanta, Ga., Donna Terrell, 42, who lives in Buffalo, N.Y., and is regional director of veteran’s administration, grew up watching their mother serve the public with a fierce sense of dedication to those she served and loyalty to her employer,
The senior Terrell worked in the retail service industry all of her life, for the same company, in the same department.
She “epitomized customer service,” Tina Terrell said of her mother. “I knew I wanted to be like her, that that was an example I should follow.”
And follow it she does, according to Maureen Santos, also of the US Forest Service Porterville office. You will not find a person who works harder or smarter, Santos said Terrell who often spends 14- to -16-hour days serving the public, including helping to make sure the parks are safe for all who want to use them.
“I get a hihg talking to people, talking to the public,” Terrell said. “I love it, not just the trees, I love the people.
Her career achievements testify to that love; her accomplishments as a team player would make Coach Paterno proud.
“She seems to never stop working,” Santos said. “She means it when she says she is a public servant. We all are because we represent the people who use the public land. Tina [Terrell] never forgets that, and works tirelessly to do the best she can. We’re glad to have someone with her experience and dedication.”
Contact Anita Stackhouse-Hite at 784-5000, Ext. 1043, or astackhouse-hite@portervillerecorder.com.
—–
To see more of The Porterville Recorder or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.portervillerecorder.com/.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Porterville Recorder, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.