Stephen Snyder:  

college was a Park Ranger. That seems a good place to start. After 3 years as a Graduate Student Teaching Assistant in the Biology department at CMSU, I got a job as a Park Ranger with the Corps of Engineers at Truman Lake. I had already been working there seasonally for two summers. Those two summers were spent patroling the western half of the lake, Clinton and Osceola areas. When I got on permanently, I worked at the Visitor Center in Warsaw. After about a year, I got a transfer to Saylorville Lake just outside of Des Moines, IA. After a couple of years with the COE, I decided that I wanted to do this with the National Park Service. And after applying to every open job with the NPS, I finally got a job at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park, 40 miles west of Austin, TX. There I gave tours of the boyhood home and the LBJ ranch. I also taught first aid and cpr for the park. We had a fire brigade with a real fire truck. I was a part of that too. While doing training at Grand Canyon, I picked up my red card that qualified me as a wildland firefighter. I got called out three seasons of firefighting. I have fought forest fires in Oregon, California, North Carolina, and Kentucky. My last fire before leaving the park service was at the big fires in Yellowstone in Wyoming. With my five year plan quickly coming to a close. Oh I forgot to tell you about that. The park service at that time was composed of mostly GS-5 Park Rangers. And there wasn't hardly any promotion at all. Most career fields in government start out there college grads at GS-9. But not the park service. Anyway, I wasn't about to sit idly by. Without a transfer or promotion I packed my parachute. In 89, I started nursing school at the University of Texas at Austin. And by the summer of 92 I had my RN. I had already been working in a psychiatric hospital for awhile as a technician. So I just kept at it as an RN. I did Psychiatric Nursing until 2000. In 2000, I got out of the d*** hospitals. Over half of the facilities that I worked at over that 8 year period are now closed. And for my money a couple more of them should be shut down too. But, thats another story. I worked the next 3 1/2 years in the Spource Plasma business. I used my assessment skills to determine if prospective plasma donors were suitable. I started in Kansas City and the company moved me to Des Moines. Well they got bought out and the Des Moines center was closed. Part of my job had been safety and employee health. Before my severence pay ran out. I got a job as an Occupational Health Nurse with a large manufacturing company. That is where I am right now. Military I went active duty in the Navy on Valentines day 1973. I did boot camp and Personnelman "A" School in Orlando, Fl. My first and last Duty Station was NAS Chase Field Beeville, TX. I worked in the Enlisted Personnel Office in the Administration Building after completing 3 months of "X" division. My best friends were either Corpsman or Dental Technicians. We took frequent trips to Corpus Christi, Aransas Pass, San Antonio, and the Hill Country. My nickname was Keebler.