Past is Prologue.

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: This month we introduce the first History section of Parks & Recreation. Throughout the year, we will highlight sections of Outdoor Recreation For America in an effort to bring a valuable spotlight to the history of our profession and our community. We will also bring you articles on park systems; national, state, and local; that serve to both inform and provide example of the prodigious opportunities and benefits our park systems offer each and every American. We hope you will take to heart what our own history provides us and use its offerings to better yourself, your community, and our parks.

Few consider history as part of the critical competencies for being a park and recreation professional. Many view history as a story, not an administrative tool. Others perhaps, still suffer the lingering effects of a "relic" elementary school history teacher.

The introduction of this history section in P&R Magazine is testimony to the fact that history is indeed a central competency of our profession. It is a tool that helps us string together past experience, present understanding, and future thinking. Perhaps said best by patriot Patrick Henry: "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past" [Statement to Virginia Convention, Richmond; March 23, 1775].

In this new section, we hope to accomplish three goals. First, we want to introduce for some, and refresh for others, the birthing of ideas from some of the most seminal park and recreation publications in the last 100 years. Second, we hope to arouse feelings of understanding, curiosity, surprise, and even a little annoyance or frustration for what appears to be glacial progress in some instances. Third, we hope this column will arouse dialogue and action; that institutional leaders will step forward and revisit the wisdom of history.

ORRRC AT 40!

On January 31, 1962, the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC), Chaired by Laurance S. Rockefeller, was submitted to Unites States President John F. Kennedy in fulfillment of Public Law 85-470. This 28-volume report "surveys our outdoor recreation resources, measures present and likely demand upon them over the next forty years, and recommends action to ensure their availability to all Americans of present and future generations".

For the next 12 months, this history section will feature reprinted excerpts from the 1962 ORRRC reports. Among the topics to be included this year include: national leadership for parks and recreation, a national recreation land classification system, the great outdoors as a classroom, urban recreation, and wilderness. The reprints will be accompanied by a provocative editorial intended to give the reader pause and to arouse reflection on where we are today relative to yesterday ... and tomorrow.

What follows is a reprint of the complete Introduction with Summary of Recommendations from the ORRRC Report to the President and Congress. This introduction is profound and needs little in the way of editorial provocation. Suffice it to say that humans tend to seek out information that confirms what we already think. Yet, a better strategy to expand our knowledge is to seek out information that disconfirms what we think, and then to ask why.

With this in mind, we wanted to highlight one paragraph from the ORRRC Introduction that gave us pause. In light of the events of September 11th and 2001 Veteran's Day Weekend for "National Unity, Hope and Healing", the following (disregarding the date) is a timeliness statement that inspires our profession to its full measure:

   "During the 1950's, the pressing nature of the problems of outdoor
   recreation had become a matter of deep concern for Members of Congress,
   State Legislators, and other public leaders, and many private citizens and
   organizations. Numerous problems, both foreign and domestic, were making
   demands upon the Nation's resources and energies. But it was felt that in
   making choices among priorities, America must not neglect its heritage of
   the outdoors -- for that heritage offers physical, spiritual, and
   educational benefits, which not only provide a better environment but help
   to achieve other national goals by adding to the health of the Nation."
   (p.1)

The editors for this year's History section are Dr. Glenn E. Haas and Dr. Marcella Wells. Dr. Haas has particular interests in regional recreation planning, natural resource history and policy, visitor management, and visitor capacity decision-making. He has served on the national boards of the NRPA National Society for Park Resources and the National Parks and Conservation Association. During the past two years, he has chaired the Federal Interagency Task Force on Visitor Capacity on Public Lands and Water. Glenn can be reached at glenn@cnr. colostate.edu or [phone]. Dr. Wells has particular interests in visitor studies and evaluation research, interpretive planning and coaching, and environmental education. She is currently working on projects with the National Park Service, American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, Colorado State Parks, Environmental Education Visitor Studies Association and NRPA. She can be reached at marcellaw [e-mail] or [phone]. This month, they authored the perspective, "Past is Prologue" on page 74.