- May 2, 2024
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Carolyn Angiolillo knew she wanted a career in the outdoors from the time she was attending St. John’s University in Queens, New York City.
Through summer jobs, she quickly found that desk work wasn’t her talent, especially when a job as a receptionist didn’t last as long as she’d planned.
“I got fired because I didn't know how to answer the phone correctly,” she said.
After graduating, it was difficult to find jobs in her field of environmental science, but then her professors at St. Johns University suggested an opportunity — a ranger for Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
The city was establishing a new program, based on the model of the National Park Service, intended to improve the quality of the city’s parks.
“When that job came up, I said, 'This would be perfect.”
Angiolillo would go on to serve in high-ranking roles with the ranger program, overseeing city parks, including Central Park.
At the time, the city was bouncing back from the fiscal crisis of 1975 and Mayor Ed Koch was pursuing a revitalization of the park system, founding the Central Park Conservancy in 1978.
Infrastructure was deteriorating, said Angiolillo, crime was frequent, and many people avoided Central Park entirely. The Dairy Visitor Center and Gift Shop was closed, Belvedere Castle had been vandalized, and the Sheep Meadow and Great Lawn were sand lots.
“Even though there were garbage cans, people littered on the ground,” she said.
Starting her career in 1979 at Prospect Park, she underwent three weeks of training, learning interpretive and tour skills, crowd control and conflict resolution.
Soon equipped with a a familiar uniform that included a Smokey Bear hat, a gray shirt, and green pants, she set to work, which included patrolling and teaching guests not to throw charcoal from a grill onto the grass or car oil into the lake.
Her success developing educational curriculums centered on the parks, and later expanded the ranger program into low-income neighborhoods, sent her climbing the ladder with the urban park ranger program.
In 1981, she was appointed deputy director and in 1983, she became director of the Manhattan and Queens boroughs. Her work in the latter role involved overseeing the supervisors of the park rangers and performing field work like crowd control.
Over time, she said, the effects of the ranger program became evident in the city’s parks.
“We went from having no one in the park to having tens of thousands of people in the park, riding their bikes and jogging."
Although Central Park became a peaceful and tranquil environment, with buildings restored and lawns reinstalled, the responsibilities weren’t always pleasant, she said. Often, she’d discover a crying child without parents in sight. Her days might end at the police station alongside as many as 10 lost children.
“A lot of people would be having such a great time that they would lose track of their kids during the day,” she said.
Angiolillo supervised park events, getting the chance to see musicians like Elton John and Simon and Garfunkel perform, but remembers one concert particularly vividly.
Considered one of the most memorable performances of the 1980s, the Diana Ross concert on July 21, 1983, drew at least 400,000 people to the Great Lawn in Central Park. After 40 minutes, a fierce thunderstorm with lashing winds cut the performance short.
Fortunately, she said, Ross worked in the same spirit as the rangers and police that were present.
“She was very good because she stayed on that microphone and said, ‘Calm down, calm down.’ She was trying to do what we were doing.”
Although Angiolillo since came to live in Longboat Key, and then finally The Meadows in Sarasota in April, she sees a very different Central Park from the one she once knew in New York City today. Litter can scarcely be found, she said, while joggers hold onto their plastic bottles to take them to the nearest recycling center.
“As we worked year after year, and you saw the difference, you really appreciated the impact you had,” she said.
