Fired National Park Service employees speak out to ABC57

 

CHESTERTON, Ind.-- Just miles from Indiana Dunes National Park is nearby Chesterton, where Marty and Beth Shrader opened Dog Days Ice Cream Parlor.

Beth was also a remote worker for the National Parks Service (NPS) until Friday. ABC57's Annie Kate met Beth at the shop, plus another terminated federal worker, Ann Poehlman, to hear their stories.

"I was a landscape architect with the National Park Service," Shrader said.

"I was a maintenance worker at Indiana Dunes National Park as a tractor operator," Poehlman said.

Shrader and Poehlman are two of the thousands of federal workers nationally who were terminated in the first few weeks of President Trump's second term, and the first term of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

"It was my dream as a kid," Poehlman said. "Life took me in another direction. I'm over 60 years old, and when I retired from my primary job, I pursued the National Park Service."

Poehlman was a Michigan State Police officer. Shrader, meanwhile, left her job as a city planner in favor of NPS.

"It was very important to me, the mission," she said.

Shrader was actually a remote worker as a project specialist for the transportation division of the Denver service center.

"This was a dream job for me because it allowed me to stay in northwest Indiana," she said. "My family is here, our business is here."

That was until she got the now infamous "fork in the road" email offering her a job buyout.

"I found it insulting", she said.

"I call it the fork in the eye," Poehlman said. "Because it doesn't feel like a fork in the road. Unless my fork is the dark precipice that I'm going to tumble over... I'm not taking that fork. No one's going to direct my life."

Neither accepted the offer to resign. They were both probationary employees, in their roles less than a year, like much of the now-terminated federal workforce.

They got notice of termination on Valentine's Day.

"When I got the notice, I was really insulted by it, because it said that I didn't have the qualifications or the fitness for the position," Shrader said. "And I'm highly qualified. All of us in our roles are highly qualified."

"I got the same canned email that everyone else got," Poehlman said, "that denigrated my work performance, that is not supported by any of my former supervision."

Now, they're left in chaos and confusion. Both women are shocked, heartbroken, and in a very precarious position. To get unemployment, they say they need to appeal why they were fired.

In Shrader's mind, she says she can't sign a letter accusing her of poor performance.

"I was supposed to sign the letter. But since it has false information in it, I can't sign it," she said. "I realize I have to pack up all my equipment and send it back to headquarters."

Their livelihoods aside, both women have greater concerns about what this means for our national parks

"There's already a huge backlog of deferred maintenance in the parks," Shrader said. "That's a given, it's been that way for a long time because the funding levels aren't enough to support what's being taken care of. "

"Without people to do [maintenance work], the trails and the roads will be unsafe. Period." Poehlman said.

They also each have greater concerns for the federal government.

"What we do need is our democracy," Poehlman said. "And that is what's on the line here, not a tractor operator job WG-6 at Indiana Dunes National Park."

"This is not cutting fat from the government. This is cutting meat. And pretty soon they're going to be cutting bone," Shrader said. "There's not the attention paid, the process to actually find out where we need to fix things. This is not fixing anything, it's really making things worse."

Shrader sent a letter to her representatives, which you can read here:

I was fired via email on Friday along with many of my colleagues from the National Park Service. The form letter we all received stated each of us “failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment” which is 100% false. We are high performing and this firing has nothing to do with quality of work. It is only because we are within the first year of federal employment and so have less protections.

I left a higher paying job as the Planning and Transit Director with the City of Valparaiso to take this position because I love our National Parks and the Indiana Dunes in particular. My colleagues and I managed infrastructure projects in parks all over the nation, repairing and building park roads, trails, and parking lots. We also helped parks plan for the future. Three of my projects were in Indiana Dunes National Park, designing and building sections of the Marquette Trail and crafting a strategic transportation plan for the park as a whole. Our division was understaffed to begin with and with Friday’s cuts and those still planned by Trump/Musk will grind progress to a halt and balloon the already enormous backlog of deferred maintenance in our parks. This is so shortsighted and will NOT save taxpayer money. It will gut our beloved parks and deteriorate visitor experience.

The Trump/Musk agenda for government efficiency is a farce. They are NOT working for the people or improving anything in our government. They are taking a wrecking ball to the federal workforce to sow chaos and fear. There ARE ways to improve the federal government and save money. This isn’t it.

I am a lifelong Hoosier, graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Ball State, and small business owner. In 2011 my husband and I opened Dog Days Ice Cream Parlor, just outside Indiana Dunes National Park. Without the job I just lost and the insurance that comes with it, our family will have to consider moving to where I can find work, shuttering a well-loved institution in the community, and uprooting our young family. Nobody wants this!

I am heartbroken and outraged at being so callously fired from a job I loved, one that is important to our Parks and that I performed well. The form letter that fired me lied about my “fitness and qualification” and I do not accept it. I also do not accept Congress doing nothing to stop Trump and Musk from dismantling our government. They are walking all over Congress and you are just letting them! They took my job. Don’t let them take over yours!

Beth Shrader