July 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 19

If you want to keep this country and improve it,
you had better know how it became what it is.

Gettysburg Battlefield

local, " he says. " We [CWT] compliment
what governments do. And we can do
things governments cannot do or do them
better-like move fast. We can do deals
that governments can't, or are prohibited
from, or just won't do. "
And not all that the Civil War Trust
does is immediately popular.
" Sometimes we'll buy land and we
want to restore it as it looked at the time
of the battle so we can teach and so we

can better remember, but mainly so we
can teach. " Lighthizer says. " So occasionally we get in conflicts with our well
intentioned, but in my view, ill advised,
friends who don't want the landscape altered. Some don't think there ever was a
tree that grows that could be cut down.
But we bought that land for the purpose
of restoring it as a piece of American history as the way it was at the time the history was being created. "
In reflecting on the Civil War Sesquicentennial beginning this month, Lighthizer sees grand themes, again, turning
on the teachable lessons of history. It's
what drives him and the Civil War Trust.
" This country is one of the most significant countries in the history of the world
in terms of freedom and the opportunity for the human spirit, " Lighthizer says.
" And it didn't happen by accident-it

widely varying degrees of sympathy for setting land aside for
parks. While assembling the $11.2 million to buy the tract took
creativity and political finesse, it didn't prepare him for wideranging criticism and opposition. Even the National Audubon
Society fought his plans convert the land to a passive park with
a variety of features and amenities (but no ball fields and other
venues for sports). Nature organizations simply wanted to leave
the land as is, in its natural state. By reconfiguring plans for the
park, Lighthizer was able to prevail, and today Quiet Waters is
immensely popular. Demand for destination weddings is so
heavy, " you can't get a wedding there, " he says.
" Quiet Waters was absolutely the apogee of my career, "
Lighthizer says. " It was the biggest fight of my life but I know I
was right. Ten million visitors a year come to the park, and that
doesn't include the people who just walk in. People still come
up to me and thank me. "
That was toward the end of his second term as county executive when he had begun working with agricultural land-use preservation programs. In those last two years, they saved more
than 2,500 acres. " It's one of my bigger regrets that in eight
years, two terms, I could have done 15,000 acres. I just didn't
think of it. "
But Lighthizer knew from that point on how to leverage creativity and the federal grant system to save more land. As Maryland transportation secretary in the first half of the 1990s,
Lighthizer thought to use federal transportation grants to

happened because people at certain
points in history did things in their fashion that had never been done before. And
it created this country. And if you want to
keep this country and improve it, you had
better know how it became what it is.
" If we learn anything from the great
American Civil War, it's we don't want to
ever do it again, " he continues. " It killed 2
percent to the American population and
priceless gene pools. Every major battle in the Civil War is like a chapter in a
book. And if you want to fully understand
the whole book, you should read all of the
chapters. That's why we're preserving
those major chapters in the book, so in 50,
500, or a 1,000 years from now the whole
story can be told and understood. "
Phil Hayward is Editor of Parks &

Recreation

preserve three major Civil War battlefields in Maryland. " I had
to convince them that it was a legitimate expenditure of transportation money, " he says of the cumbersomely named Safe,
Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A
Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). " But it preserved view sheds
and the view sheds here just happened to be battlefields. And
we did 4,500 acres, just in Maryland. It's now a national model
and has been for 20 years, but we were the first ones to do it. "
Lighthizer went on to secure more federal transportation enhancement funds for a variety of projects, from fish ladders to
hike-biker trails (the trail around Baltimore-Washington Airport
was the first in the country to be funded this way, Lighthizer
says). " But they 'got' battlefields early on-I thought we'd get
fish ladders ahead of battlefields. But they approved it, and we
ran like hell. " To make the money go further, Lighthizer established a 20 percent funding match from Maryland's Department
of Natural Resources and worked with the state assembly for
monies for a 50 percent match. " I spent all the money, not only
for my four years, but for the next four. They guy who came in
after me was furious-it was all spent. "
Following his retirement from government, Lighthizer joined
the board of trustees of the Civil War Trust and in 1999 became
its president. He describes making a living in the private sector
after a lifetime of public service as " purgatory. " " So, when they
asked if I'd join them, I didn't say yes, but hell yes! It was the
best thing I ever did. "

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