Our Board

Mary first fell in love with Flagstaff when after graduating from college she drove across the country with the goal of backpacking in every National Park that got in her way. The car broke down near Flagstaff where she had to spend a few days before descending into the Grand Canyon.

After that trip, she joined the Peace Corps and worked as a Community Forestry Volunteer in Nepal. She returned to the United States and started work as a Park Ranger.

Time passed and before she knew it 26 years of her life had been spent working for the National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Most of her career was in the Southwest with stints in Massachusetts and Wisconsin.

When she retired the choice to return to Flagstaff was obvious, an added bonus was that her husband lived there!

She is an avid outdoorswoman who enjoys any self-propelled outdoor activity. She has visited and trekked on every continent except Antarctica.

Kim is retired from the National Park Service, after assignments at Mt. Rainier, Everglades, and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and the Flagstaff Area National Monuments (Wupatki, Sunset Crater Volcano, and Walnut Canyon), where he was Chief Ranger for many years.

Following retirement from the NPS, he was a Visiting Lecturer for the Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands (Indiana University), adjunct faculty at NAU, and a contracted instructor, assisting in the training of employees at the National Park Service.

Kim studied at the Ohio State University, and online through Slippery Rock University. He continues to have an interest in planning and policy on public lands.

Wolf recently retired from Northern Arizona University where he taught for 25 years. He began his NAU career as an archaeologist conducting excavations on the North Coast of Peru where he focused on prehistoric food systems. He has also collaborated with the Hopi tribe to promote cultural preservation. Wolf directed NAU’s Honors Program and then became the Founding Dean of the transformed Honors College. Wolf taught a range of interactive courses on composition and literature, archaeology, theory, human evolution, and food and culture.

Wolf has been an active user of public lands since he can remember—from camping to backpacking to fishing—and now hunting. His passion for foraging and hunting comes together in the kitchen where he enjoys feeding others—especially friends and family. Wolf enjoys giving back by using his love of public lands to protect these special places and their associated wildlife and cultural resources.

Carl moved from the East Coast to Tuba City, Arizona in 1997, where he and his wife Amanda raised their three children. He and his family moved to Flagstaff in 2010, and Carl joined the board of the Friends of Flagstaff National Monuments in 2016.

Carl worked for a non-profit for more than a decade, was an at-home father for even longer, taught briefly at Tuba City High School, and continues to coach high school cross country and track. He runs, bikes, skis, and walks his dog in the forests near Walnut Canyon National Monument every chance he gets.

Carl is a retired architect who was with the firm Taylor Anderson Architects in Atlanta, Georgia, for 32 years. They specialized in high-technology building types (research, labs, medical, etc.). Other specialties included “green” (sustainability-based) design and program management.

Carl and his wife Holly moved to Flagstaff in 1997 where Carl has been active in public service and held elective office as Coconino County Supervisor for District One. He has been President of the Board for the Flagstaff Arboretum and the Flagstaff Symphony, just to give two of many examples. He was chairman of the Coconino County Planning and Zoning Commission, was appointed to the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission by the Governor, and was appointed to the BLM’s Resource Advisory Council by the Secretary of the Interior.

For several years, Carl and Holly provided pro-bono consulting to non-profit organizations needing strategic planning for facilities.

Carl enjoys avocational archeology, photography, travel and camping, and most of all spending time with his wife Holly.

I’m Don Howard and have lived in the Timberline area on North Hwy 89 since 1978. My wife Anita and I raised three children here, a place they still think of as home.

I was born in Phoenix in the same house my dad was born in. When I was a boy, our family would come to the Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments. I remember those days, including the fact that at the time you could climb the crater, and I ran down the side of it.

I’ve learned a lot since those days and have come to respect the monuments and the dedicated men and women that protect and care for them. As a long-term fire chief at the Summit Fire District, I had the privilege of working with the Monuments staff on several levels. The interactions with the people of the National Park Service were some of my favorite and most meaningful times as a fire chief.

I also taught U.S History, Arizona History, Life Skills, and Cultural Heritage in the Flagstaff Public Schools for 15 years. I experienced more joy on an hourly basis, helping young people to develop their own abilities to think than at any other time in my life

As I’ve lived most of my life in this area, the opportunity to work with the Friends of the Monuments is something I would like to do. We need to keep the land heritage of the people that lived here alive. I look forward to supporting the efforts of the “Friends of Flagstaff National Monuments” in whatever way I can.

Kevin Dahl is Arizona Senior Program Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, where he works on issues concerning the Arizona units of the National Park Service, including such well-known parks as Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, and Saguaro.

Prior to NPCA, Kevin was executive director of Native Seeds/SEARCH, a regional group that works to preserve the genetic diversity of Southwestern Native American crops.

He was also executive director of the Tucson Audubon Society and Natural Resources Superintendent for Pima County’s Parks and Recreation Department.

An alumnus of both the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, his interest in plants led him to obtain his degree in ethnobotany from Prescott College.

Kevin is the author of Wild Plants of the Sonoran Desert, published by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and Native Harvest: Authentic Southwestern Gardening, published by the Western National Parks Association.

Pam graduated from Ohio State University in Parks and Recreation. During that time, she ventured to the west and fell in love with the Grand Canyon. While pursuing her master’s degree at the University of Nevada-Reno, she explored more of the west’s outdoors, became a black belt in Karate, and taught classes at the University.

After graduating, she became the head park ranger and peace officer at Lahontan State Recreation Park. In 1983, Pam moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue her doctorate in the Department of Urban and Rural Planning in Environmental Studies and also gained a second master’s degree in public administration. During her years at Wisconsin earning degrees, she was a recreation planner with the Department of Natural Resources for the State of Wisconsin.

After graduating in 1987, Pam landed a job as a professor and served as chair of the Department of Parks and Recreation for six years with Northern Arizona University until she retired as Emeritus Professor in June of 2018.

Her passion for research took her to study human impact monitoring with many of her undergraduate and graduate students in Idaho, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona with National Parks Services, National Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management plus some private, non-profit preserves.

She has been the president of the Arizona Parks and Recreation Association and served six years on the State Parks and Recreation Commission. Presently, Pam serves on the Coconino County Parks and Recreation Commission, Friends of Monuments, and the Board of ACE.

Pam is an avid hiker and loves to bike. Pam enjoys spending time with her three dogs, two cats, two sons, and a spouse of 33 years. Pam’s hope is that the work that she has done has helped to preserve our public lands and create a love of the outdoors.