March 23, 2007 — Edmond Roberts is a talker. Ask him a question about growing up on St. John, his years with the National Park Service, his appointment to the St. John Coastal Zone Management Committee or his current retirement job as a taxi driver, and he has plenty to say.
Just recently, he says, a man in his taxi recalled a visit 40 years ago when a park ranger named Edmond Roberts helped him learn more about St. John.
"I told him I was Edmond Roberts," he says, delighted at the coincidence that put the man in his taxi.
Roberts, 66, says life has been all about relationships such as the one with the recent visitor, as well as the many people he's met over the years. He was born in Coral Bay at a time far different than the St. John of today.
"Houses on St. John were small houses to give shelter," Roberts recalls. "We spent most of our time outside."
Now enormous homes are being built on St. John. Those large houses are built to impress the neighbors, not because the people needed shelter, Roberts says.
He went to elementary school at Benjamin Franklin School, which is now Guy Benjamin School. Roberts boarded with a Thomas family on St. Thomas so he could attend high school at Charlotte Amalie. After high school, he worked a year as a waiter at what was then Caneel Bay Plantation, now Caneel Bay Resort.
In 1960, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he spent six years at posts across the United States and in Korea and Panama. When he returned home, he worked about a year for the late Sen. Theovald Moorehead, running his bar, Mooie's, in Cruz Bay.
But Roberts didn't want to spend his working life tending bar, so he moved on to a job at the local government's Recreation Department.
When a lifeguard job opened up at the national park, he jumped at the chance to join the park service. Across the park system, Roberts says, the park service was hiring local residents to work as technicians so they could pass on local knowledge to the transient ranger staff.
"To carry on the stories," he says. As a technician, Roberts says, he worked in interpretation, did boat and road patrols and performed maintenance. But the technician's job didn't afford him any upward mobility, so he began applying for ranger positions. Eventually his efforts paid off.
He worked at the park on St. John until 1981, when he moved on to Biscayne National Park as interpretive supervisor. In 1984, he went to Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego.
"In order to get into middle management, I had to have experience in other parks," he says.
By then he and his wife, Sharon, had three children who needed more opportunities, Roberts says. His goal was to work in parks on the East Coast, the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest before ending up in Alaska. He spent 13 years in San Diego when his dream job at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska opened up.
His wife was established in her education career in San Diego and his children were heading off to college, but the family decided he should accept the job while they stayed behind, Roberts says. His children, Andrea, Brian and Dana, are now in their 20s and 30s.
Roberts worked at Wrangell-St. Elias from 1998 until he retired in 2003.
"I couldn't ask for a better career than the park," he says.
He once heard that park employees worked for sunsets rather than money, and he couldn't agree more.
"The rain coming down right now is beautiful to me," he says, as a shower dampens the ground outside the park's Visitor's Center.
Roberts came home to build a house in Coral Bay even though his wife still works in San Diego. The two have a commuter marriage, but Roberts says that eventually he'll probably return full-time to San Diego.
He and his wife like to travel, taking road trips across the country when they have time.
"I've been to every state but three," he says, ticking off North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota as those missing from his list. Meanwhile, he keeps busy with life on St. John. He says he agreed to serve on the CZM Committee in hopes of maintaining the island's beauty while allowing the government to generate revenue though development.
Roberts weighed in on St. John's recent rampant growth. Some people came to St. John because they loved the island's beauty, but others came because they wanted to exploit that beauty, Roberts says, summing the problem up in one word: "Greed."
He used the same word in characterizing some of his fellow taxi drivers. While some are good, he says, most are concerned only with making money and not with providing a service to visitors and residents.
Roberts says he simply ignores those bad apples while he continues to share his love of St. John with visitors.
"If I can help people to better enjoy St. John …," he says.
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