Louise Woolard’s last day at Pocahontas State Park is Friday, March 29.
The longtime state employee has been office manager at the park for 31 1/2 years.
Woolard’s time at Virginia’s largest state park before that began when she started helping her parents, Charles and Lois Moore, run the park pool in 1981. She continued doing so after she became
“It’s been a family thing,” she said last week. “My three kids grew up in the park.”
Woolard has noticed a lot of technology changes over the years.
“I started with a typewriter. It’s been incredible,” she said.
In addition to technology, her job has changed in other ways. “When I started, there wasn’t enough work for a secretary, so I would paint fences or cut grass and did interpretive programs for kids.”
“By the mid-‘90s, the park systems really picked up,” she said.
Now, things are changing so fast that Woolard, 61, said she needs a permanent vacation.
The Chesterfield native said she will miss her co-workers. “The office managers (in the state park system) are a really tight-knit group,” she said.
She will also miss her office staff and helping customers enjoy the park.
When she leaves, Carolyn Wells and Joey Burdine will fill the void until a new office manager is hired. (The position closed March 20, Woolard said, noting there were over 100 applicants.)
She will also miss her favorite part of the park, an area of Swift Creek that she calls The Sanctuary. “It’s just quiet and peaceful,” she said. It’s a place she has gone many times after a stressful day, putting her kayak in at the boat launch and heading upstream to the west to an area east of Qualla Road.
The park has been a second home to Woolard over the years, but “it’s just time” to retire, she said.
She and her husband, Earl, bought a second home in Bath County in the mountains west of Lexington 10 years ago. “We love the mountains,” she said. It’s a place where her three children and 11 grandchildren can come and visit. “They love to go there now anyway,” she said. “We’ve been using it as a vacation home.”
Zoe Rogers, the former media liaison at Pocahontas, retired a little over a year ago and moved to Amherst County, east of Lexington. “She encouraged me to retire,” Woolard said. “She said, ‘You’ll be OK. It’s wonderful!’ But it’s really scary. I haven’t done anything this terrifying in a long time.”
In a speech at a farewell given in her honor Sunday, March 17, Woolard said she will miss her “stinky park smell clothes” the most. But, she said, “The mountains are calling … and I must go!”
Editor’s note: Originally known as Swift Creek Recreational Demonstration Area and built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1942, the area was turned over to the state and became Pocahontas State Park on June 6, 1946.
